Comparative Literature 1

Comparative Literature COLT 0510P

COLT 0610D
Reading the Renaissance
Rites of Passage
COLT 0610Q Before Wikipedia
Comparative literature is the study of literature and other cultural COLT 0710C Introduction to Scandinavian Literature
expressions across linguistic and cultural boundaries. At Brown, the COLT 0710I New Worlds: Reading Spaces and Places
Department of Comparative Literature is distinct in its conviction that in Colonial Latin America
literary research and instruction must be international in character. The COLT 0710N A Comparative Introduction to the
department performs a role similar to that of the study of international Literatures of the Americas
relations, but works with languages and artistic traditions, so as COLT 0710X Fan Fiction
to understand cultures "from the inside." Both the department’s
undergraduate and graduate programs are held to be among the finest in COLT 0710Z Comedy from Athens to Hollywood
the country. COLT 0711H The Arabic Novel
For additional information, please visit the department's website: https:// COLT 0711O Off the Beaten Path: The Diversity of
complit.brown.edu/ Modern Japanese Literature
COLT 0711Q Writing Love in Korean Literature
Comparative Literature Concentration COLT 0810H How Not to Be a Hero
Requirements COLT 0810I Tales and Talemakers of the Non-Western
World
The concentration in Comparative Literature enables students to study COLT 0810L The Pursuit of Happiness
an illustrative range of literary topics and to develop a focused critical
COLT 0810M Uncanny Tales: Narratives of Repetition
understanding of how cultures differ from one another and what those
and Interruption
differences mean. Our courses provide opportunities to engage with
literary works across linguistic and cultural boundaries, exploring the COLT 0811I Classical Mythology and the Western
traditions and innovations of the literatures of the world. Tradition
In the spirit of Brown’s Open Curriculum, a concentration in Comparative COLT 0812O Reading Art in Literature
Literature affords great academic freedom. Advanced literature courses COLT 0812W The Epic Tradition: from Homer to Milton
from any literature department at Brown count for concentration credit. Any COLT 1210 Introduction to the Theory of Literature
language —ancient or modern—supported at Brown may form part of a COLT 1310G Silk Road Fictions
Comparative Literature concentration program. All students take a course
COLT 1310J The Arab Renaissance
in literary theory and have the opportunity to complete a senior essay.
COLT 1310N Global Modernism and Crisis
There are three concentration tracks and requirements:
COLT 1410S Classical Tragedy
• Track 1: Comparative Literature in Two Languages
COLT 1420E The Nineteenth-Century Novel (ENGL
• Track 2: Comparative Literature in Three Languages 1561I)
• Track 3: Literary Translation
COLT 1420F Fantastic and Existentialist Literatures of
Genre and Period Requirements for all concentrators: Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil
• One course in each literary genre (poetry, narrative, and drama/film) COLT 1420O Proust, Joyce and Faulkner
• Courses must cover at least three different historical periods (such as, COLT 1421V Modernisms North and South: Ulysses in
Antiquity; Middle Ages; Renaissance/Early Modern; Enlightenment; Dublin, Paris, and Buenos Aires
Modern: 19th-21st centuries). COLT 1422L The Modernist Novel: Alienation and
Track 1: Concentration in Comparative Narration
COLT 1422M Reading the Short Story
Literature in two languages COLT 1430B Art and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early
Requirements Modern Literature
COLT 1430D Critical Approaches to Chinese Poetry
COLT 1210 Introduction to the Theory of Literature 1
COLT 1430I Poetry of Europe: Montale, Celan, Hill
TWO literature courses taught above the 1000-level in the 2
COLT 1431B Modern Arabic Poetry
first chosen literature. (Courses may be taken in any literature
department, and may fall under such courses codes as COLT, COLT 1431C Poets, Poetry, and Politics
ENGL, FREN, HISP, CHIN, RUSS, GRMN, etc.) COLT 1431F Reading Modernist Poetry
TWO literature courses taught above the 1000-level in the 2 COLT 1431H Women Writing Epic (CLAS 1930F)
second chosen literature. (Courses may be taken in any COLT 1440P Nationalism and Transnationalism in Film
literature department, and may fall under such courses codes as and Fiction
COLT, ENGL, FREN, HISP, CHIN, RUSS, GRMN, etc.) COLT 1440U The Listener (Literature, Theory, Film)
FIVE electives. Courses taught in Comparative Literature and 5 COLT 1440X Shéhérazades : Depicting the "Orientale"
other literature courses at any level (below or above 1000) may in Modern French Culture
satisfy this requirement.
COLT 1610B Irony
Total Credits 10
COLT 1610K Literature and Multilingualism (GRMN
Examples of courses that may fulfill the requirements, 1340N)
above, include but are not limited to the following. Students COLT 1610V The Promise of Being: Heidegger for
are encouraged to discuss class choices with their advisor. Beginners
COLT 0510C The World of Lyric Poetry COLT 1710C Literary Translation Workshop
COLT 0510F Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, The Men COLT 1710D Exercises in Literary Translation
and the Myths COLT 1810G Fiction and History
COLT 0510K The 1001 Nights COLT 1810N Freud: Writer and Reader

Comparative Literature 1
2 Comparative Literature

COLT 1810P Literature and Medicine COLT 0711H The Arabic Novel
COLT 1811L Travel, Tourism, Trafficking through the COLT 0711O Off the Beaten Path: The Diversity of
Ages Modern Japanese Literature
COLT 1812A Literatures of Immigration COLT 0711Q Writing Love in Korean Literature
COLT 1813M Making a List COLT 0810H How Not to Be a Hero
COLT 1813N Early Modern Women's Writing COLT 0810I Tales and Talemakers of the Non-Western
COLT 1814S The Balkans, Europe's Other?: Literature, World
Film, History COLT 0810L The Pursuit of Happiness
COLT 1814U Politics of Reading COLT 0810M Uncanny Tales: Narratives of Repetition
COLT 1815R Germans and Jews (GRMN 1340Y) and Interruption
COLT 1815U Encountering Monsters in Comparative COLT 0811I Classical Mythology and the Western
Literature Tradition
COLT 1815W How to Do Things with Modernism (HMAN COLT 0812O Reading Art in Literature
1976F) COLT 0812W The Epic Tradition: from Homer to Milton
COLT 2650W Vision and Visualization in Literature: The COLT 1210 Introduction to the Theory of Literature
Rhetoric of Enargeia (CLAS 2110K) COLT 1310G Silk Road Fictions
COLT 2720C Literary Translation COLT 1310J The Arab Renaissance
COLT 2720D Translation: Theory and Practice COLT 1310N Global Modernism and Crisis
COLT 2820A New Directions for Comparative Literature COLT 1410S Classical Tragedy
COLT 2820M Discourses of the Senses COLT 1420E The Nineteenth-Century Novel (ENGL
COLT 2821S Historical Form 1561I)
COLT 2822O Literature and Philosophy: Case Studies COLT 1420F Fantastic and Existentialist Literatures of
of a Vexed Relationship (GRMN 2662Q) Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil
COLT 1420O Proust, Joyce and Faulkner
Track 2: Concentration in Comparative COLT 1421V Modernisms North and South: Ulysses in
Literature in three languages Dublin, Paris, and Buenos Aires
COLT 1422L The Modernist Novel: Alienation and
Requirements Narration
COLT 1210 Introduction to the Theory of Literature 1 COLT 1422M Reading the Short Story
TWO literature courses taught above the 1000-level in the 2 COLT 1430B Art and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early
first chosen literature. (Courses may be taken in any literature Modern Literature
department, and may fall under such courses codes as COLT, COLT 1430D Critical Approaches to Chinese Poetry
ENGL, FREN, HISP, CHIN, RUSS, GRMN, etc.)
COLT 1430I Poetry of Europe: Montale, Celan, Hill
TWO literature courses taught above the 1000-level in the 2 COLT 1431B Modern Arabic Poetry
second chosen literature. (Courses may be taken in any
literature department, and may fall under such courses codes as COLT 1431C Poets, Poetry, and Politics
COLT, ENGL, FREN, HISP, CHIN, RUSS, GRMN, etc.) COLT 1431F Reading Modernist Poetry
TWO literature courses taught above the 1000-level in the 2 COLT 1431H Women Writing Epic (CLAS 1930F)
third chosen literature. (Courses may be taken in any literature COLT 1440P Nationalism and Transnationalism in Film
department, and may fall under such courses codes as COLT, and Fiction
ENGL, FREN, HISP, CHIN, RUSS, GRMN, etc.) COLT 1440U The Listener (Literature, Theory, Film)
THREE electives. Courses taught in Comparative Literature and 3 COLT 1440X Shéhérazades : Depicting the "Orientale"
other literature courses at any level (below or above 1000) may in Modern French Culture
satisfy this requirement.
COLT 1610B Irony
Total Credits 10 COLT 1610K Literature and Multilingualism (GRMN
Examples of courses that may fulfill the requirements, 1340N)
above, include but are not limited to the following. Students COLT 1610V The Promise of Being: Heidegger for
are encouraged to discuss class choices with their advisor. Beginners
COLT 0510C The World of Lyric Poetry COLT 1710C Literary Translation Workshop
COLT 0510F Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, The Men COLT 1710D Exercises in Literary Translation
and the Myths COLT 1810G Fiction and History
COLT 0510K The 1001 Nights COLT 1810N Freud: Writer and Reader
COLT 0510P Reading the Renaissance COLT 1810P Literature and Medicine
COLT 0610D Rites of Passage COLT 1811L Travel, Tourism, Trafficking through the
COLT 0610Q Before Wikipedia Ages
COLT 0710C Introduction to Scandinavian Literature COLT 1812A Literatures of Immigration
COLT 0710I New Worlds: Reading Spaces and Places COLT 1813M Making a List
in Colonial Latin America COLT 1813N Early Modern Women's Writing
COLT 0710N A Comparative Introduction to the COLT 1814S The Balkans, Europe's Other?: Literature,
Literatures of the Americas Film, History
COLT 0710X Fan Fiction COLT 1814U Politics of Reading
COLT 0710Z Comedy from Athens to Hollywood COLT 1815F Memory, Commemoration, Testimony

2 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 3

COLT 1815R Germans and Jews (GRMN 1340Y) COLT 0810I Tales and Talemakers of the Non-Western
COLT 1815U Encountering Monsters in Comparative World
Literature COLT 0810L The Pursuit of Happiness
COLT 1815W How to Do Things with Modernism (HMAN COLT 0810M Uncanny Tales: Narratives of Repetition
1976F) and Interruption
COLT 2650W Vision and Visualization in Literature: The COLT 0811I Classical Mythology and the Western
Rhetoric of Enargeia (CLAS 2110K) Tradition
COLT 2720C Literary Translation COLT 0812O Reading Art in Literature
COLT 2720D Translation: Theory and Practice COLT 0812W The Epic Tradition: from Homer to Milton
COLT 2820A New Directions for Comparative Literature COLT 1210 Introduction to the Theory of Literature
COLT 2820M Discourses of the Senses COLT 1310G Silk Road Fictions
COLT 2821S Historical Form COLT 1310J The Arab Renaissance
COLT 2822O Literature and Philosophy: Case Studies COLT 1310N Global Modernism and Crisis
of a Vexed Relationship (GRMN 2662Q) COLT 1410S Classical Tragedy
Track 3: Concentration in Literary Translation COLT 1420E The Nineteenth-Century Novel (ENGL
1561I)
Requirements COLT 1420F Fantastic and Existentialist Literatures of
Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil
COLT 1210 Introduction to the Theory of Literature 1
COLT 1420O Proust, Joyce and Faulkner
Literary Translation (COLT 1710) 1
COLT 1421V Modernisms North and South: Ulysses in
At least one course in linguistics (including COLT 2720 Literary 1
Dublin, Paris, and Buenos Aires
Translation and history of the language courses). This may be
taken at any level. COLT 1422L The Modernist Novel: Alienation and
Narration
At least one workshop in Literary Arts. This may be taken at any 1
level. COLT 1422M Reading the Short Story
TWO literature courses taught above the 1000-level in the 2 COLT 1430B Art and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early
first chosen literature. (Courses may be taken in any literature Modern Literature
department, and may fall under such courses codes as COLT, COLT 1430D Critical Approaches to Chinese Poetry
ENGL, FREN, HISP, CHIN, RUSS, GRMN, etc.) COLT 1430I Poetry of Europe: Montale, Celan, Hill
TWO literature courses taught above the 1000-level in the 2 COLT 1431B Modern Arabic Poetry
second chosen literature. (Courses may be taken in any COLT 1431C Poets, Poetry, and Politics
literature department, and may fall under such courses codes as
COLT, ENGL, FREN, HISP, CHIN, RUSS, GRMN, etc.) COLT 1431F Reading Modernist Poetry
COLT 1431H Women Writing Epic (CLAS 1930F)
TWO electives. Courses taught in Comparative Literature and 2
other literature courses at any level (below or above 1000) may COLT 1440P Nationalism and Transnationalism in Film
satisfy this requirement. and Fiction
A senior thesis, eligible for Honors, consisting of substantial COLT 1440U The Listener (Literature, Theory, Film)
work in translation with a critical introduction. Completing a COLT 1440X Shéhérazades : Depicting the "Orientale"
thesis is required of all Track 3 students but does not guarantee in Modern French Culture
departmental honors. COLT 1610B Irony
Total Credits 10 COLT 1610K Literature and Multilingualism (GRMN
1340N)
Examples of courses that may fulfill the requirements,
above, include but are not limited to the following. Students COLT 1610V The Promise of Being: Heidegger for
are encouraged to discuss class choices with their advisor. Beginners
COLT 0510C The World of Lyric Poetry COLT 1710C Literary Translation Workshop
COLT 0510F Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, The Men COLT 1710D Exercises in Literary Translation
and the Myths COLT 1810G Fiction and History
COLT 0510K The 1001 Nights COLT 1810N Freud: Writer and Reader
COLT 0510P Reading the Renaissance COLT 1810P Literature and Medicine
COLT 0610D Rites of Passage COLT 1811L Travel, Tourism, Trafficking through the
COLT 0610Q Before Wikipedia Ages
COLT 0710C Introduction to Scandinavian Literature COLT 1812A Literatures of Immigration
COLT 0710I New Worlds: Reading Spaces and Places COLT 1813M Making a List
in Colonial Latin America COLT 1813N Early Modern Women's Writing
COLT 0710N A Comparative Introduction to the COLT 1814S The Balkans, Europe's Other?: Literature,
Literatures of the Americas Film, History
COLT 0710X Fan Fiction COLT 1814U Politics of Reading
COLT 0710Z Comedy from Athens to Hollywood COLT 1815F Memory, Commemoration, Testimony
COLT 0711H The Arabic Novel COLT 1815R Germans and Jews (GRMN 1340Y)
COLT 0711O Off the Beaten Path: The Diversity of COLT 1815U Encountering Monsters in Comparative
Modern Japanese Literature Literature
COLT 0711Q Writing Love in Korean Literature COLT 1815W How to Do Things with Modernism (HMAN
COLT 0810H How Not to Be a Hero 1976F)

Comparative Literature 3
4 Comparative Literature

COLT 2650W Vision and Visualization in Literature: The

Rhetoric of Enargeia (CLAS 2110K) Comparative Literature Graduate Program
COLT 2720C Literary Translation The department of Comparative Literature offers a graduate program
COLT 2720D Translation: Theory and Practice leading to the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree. While doctoral
COLT 2820A New Directions for Comparative Literature students may also earn the Master of Arts (A.M.) degree en route to the
Ph.D., the department does not admit students into a terminal Master's
COLT 2820M Discourses of the Senses degree program.
COLT 2821S Historical Form
For more information on admission and program requirements, please visit
COLT 2822O Literature and Philosophy: Case Studies the following website:
of a Vexed Relationship (GRMN 2662Q)
http://www.brown.edu/academics/gradschool/programs/comparative-
Notes: literature (http://www.brown.edu/academics/gradschool/programs/
comparative-literature/)
Prerequisites in languages: Courses
Students must demonstrate proficiency in the languages of their selected
literatures. We recommend that prerequisite(s) for taking 1000-level COLT 0510A. Best-sellers.
courses in their languages be completed by Semester V. Study of seven novels published within the last decade that have enjoyed
broad success with reading publics in different places. What pleasures of
Students working in non-European languages may be allowed more thought and imagination do we derive from these books, and how can we
latitude; be sure to be sure to consult a concentration advisor about express clearly our responses? What is the appeal of these best-sellers
constructing an individualized plan. first to their home audience, then to readers in other social environments
and cultures? How may we reshape our own horizons of thought in order
Selecting literature courses in your language to appreciate them? Students will be encouraged to develop their skills of
areas: literary analysis, interpretation, and critical discussion. Two lectures and
one discussion section per week. Several short papers, quizzes, and a
Readings must normally be in the original language. If English is one of
final exam.
your languages, courses need to be devoted chiefly to literature originally
written in English. COLT 0510B. Caribbean Re-writes.
Through close readings of canonical European texts and rewritings
Honors in Comparative Literature of them in the twentieth-century Caribbean, we explore the literary
Students in all tracks may earn honors in the concentration by successfully possibilities and political implications of writing the old in a new language.
completing a thesis that is granted honors upon submission. Completing Readings include Columbus's diaries alongside Carpentier's The Harp and
a thesis in any track does not guarantee departmental honors. Honors are the Shadow (Cuba); Shakespeare's Tempest with that of Aimé Cesaire
granted upon the recommendation of the two thesis readers. (Martinique); and Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights alongside novels by
Jean Rhys (Dominica) and Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe).
Tracks 1 & 2. Theses are analytical studies of literary topics, comparative
in nature, based upon research, and usually between 50 and 100 pages. COLT 0510C. The World of Lyric Poetry.
They are usually composed of 3 chapters, with an introduction and a Lyric poetry is the prime mode for conveying emotion in many cultures,
conclusion. Students are expected to choose a topic that involves work in from ancient times to the present day. This course will survey the variety
each of the literatures of their concentration in the original language. of forms and themes from the earliest texts from Greece, Rome, China
and Japan, then the glories of the Renaissance and the Tang Dynasty,
Track 3. Theses consist of a substantial work in translation with a critical
then move to the challenges for lyric expression in the modern world.
introduction outlining the method used and specific problems encountered,
Enrollment limited to 19 first year studens.
and commenting on the history of the original work together with other
translations, if any. COLT 0510D. Poetry and Music.
(See detailed Guidelines for Honors Theses (http://www.brown.edu/ Explores the collaboration between poets and composers in the twentieth
academics/comparative-literature/undergraduate-program/honors- century. It will primarily focus on Modern Greek composers (Hadjidakis,
thesis/) in Comparative Literature on Departmental website). Theodorakis, Lagios and others) and their collaboration with numerous
poets (Garcia Lorca, Gatsos, Eluard, Elytis, Neruda, Ritsos and others).
Capstone option These works will also be examined in depth from a literary and theoretical
perspective. Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.
Students in Tracks 1 & 2 not taking Honors are urged, but not required, to
complete a senior essay, which may be less extensive in scope and length COLT 0510F. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, The Men and the Myths.
than the Honors thesis but which should constitute an integration of some Che Guevara and Fidel Castro are among the twentieth century’s most
aspect of their study. iconic figures, thanks to their roles in the Cuban Revolution and in
anti-imperialist struggles across the globe. They are also among the
Transfer of Credits: most divisive, eliciting passionate disapproval among some and strong
Two courses per semester of study abroad may be applied to the admiration among others. In this seminar, we will read Guevara and
concentration, up to a total of four courses (for two semesters abroad). A Castro’s speeches and writings alongside literary, visual and cinematic
maximum of five courses from external venues (study abroad; transfer representations of them, paying particular attention to the ways in which
credits from other institutions, including summer study) may be applied to their lives and deaths have generated distinct interpretations, in Cuba and
the concentration. beyond. Open only to first-year students.
COLT 0510G. "The Grand Tour; or a Room with a View": Italy in the
Joint or Double Concentration: Imagination of Others.
Joint or double concentration programs may also be arranged. Students Italy has for many decades been the place to which people traveled in
may also combine a concentration in Comparative Literature with a order to both encounter something quite alien to their own identities and
teaching certificate in English or a modern language. A student interested yet a place where they were supposed to find themselves, indeed to
in such a program should consult the advisor in the Education Department construct their proper selves. This course introduces students to some
(http://www.brown.edu/academics/education/) and the advisor in of the most important texts that describe this "grand tour." We will read
Comparative Literature as early as possible (preferably by Semester texts (both literary and travelogues by Goethe, De Stael, Henry James,
V). In accordance with University policy, double concentrators are allowed Hawthorne, Freud, among others, as well as view films (such as "A Room
a maximum overlap of two courses between concentrations. With a View:) - all in order to determine the ways in which Italy "means" for
the cultural imagination of Western civilization. For first year students only.

4 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 5

COLT 0510I. Virgil and Milton. COLT 0610A. The Far Side of the Old World: Perspectives on Chinese
We will read the Aeneid and Paradise Lost with interpretive patience. Culture.
The study of fate, character, and poetics will be wedded to investigations A survey of traditional Chinese culture focusing on the major literary and
of beauty, wonder, and nationhood. Enrollment limited to 19 first year artistic achievements of six major periods in Chinese history, including
students. philosophical texts, poetry, various forms of the fine arts, and vernacular
fiction and drama. A broad range of primary materials will give the student
COLT 0510K. The 1001 Nights.
greater insight and appreciation of Chinese culture in general and also
Explores the origins, performance, reception, adaptation, and translation of
provide a foundation for further study of East Asia in other disciplines.
the 1001 Nights, one of the most beloved and influential story collections
in world literature. We will spend the semester in the company of genies, COLT 0610C. Banned Books.
princes, liars, slaves, mass murderers, orientalists, and Walt Disney, and An examination of literary censorship in which we read various texts
will consider the Nights in the context of its various literary, artistic, and forbidden for putatively violating social, religious, and political norms in
cinematic afterlives. particular historical and cultural contexts. We also analyze the secondary
Spr COLT0510K S01 26350 MWF 1:00-1:50(06) (E. Muhanna) literature surrounding the banning of these ostensibly "dangerous" texts in
order to theorize questions and assumptions about the power of art and
COLT 0510L. What is Tragedy?. the ironies generated by these debates.
Introduction to tragedy. Readings may include Sophocles, Shakespeare,
Hegel, Chekhov, Chan-wook Park, and Jia Zhangke. Enrollment limited to COLT 0610D. Rites of Passage.
19 first year students. Examines a seemingly universal theme-coming of age-by focusing on
texts from disparate periods and cultures. Proposes that notions of
COLT 0510M. Early Modern Selves: From Soliloquy to Self-Portrait. "growing up" are profoundly inflected by issues of class, gender and race,
We will study the early modern self through its manifestation in the and that the literary representation of these matters changes drastically
soliloquy (Shakespeare), philosophical treatise (Descartes), early modern over time. Texts from the Middle Ages to the present; authors drawn
poetry, and self-portraiture (Rembrandt). After examining Hamlet's "To be from Chrétien de Troyes, Quevedo, Prévost, Balzac, Brontë, Twain,
or not to be" speech and other Shakespearean soliloquies as moments Faulkner, Vesaas, Rhys, Satrapi and Foer. Enrollment limited to 19 first
in which characters represent themselves in speech, we will turn to year students.
Descartes' view of man’s essence as his thinking nature. We will then read
metaphysical poetry to understand the influence of religion on the early COLT 0610E. Crisis and Identity in Mexico, 1519-1968.
modern self. Readings include Hamlet, Richard II and III, Taming of the Examines four moments of crisis/critical moments for the forging
Shrew, Discourse on Method, Meditations, and poetry by John Donne. of Mexican identity: the “Conquest” as viewed from both sides; the
hegemonic 17th century; the Mexican Revolution as represented by
COLT 0510N. Shakespeare (ENGL 0310A). diverse stakeholders; the "Mex-hippies" of the 1960s. We especially
Interested students must register for ENGL 0310A. explore how key literary, historical, and essayistic writings have dealt with
COLT 0510O. Twentieth-Century Experiments. Mexico's past and present, with trauma and transformation. Readings
In this course, we will read some of the most experimental and include works by Carlos Fuentes, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Octavio
adventurous literature of the 20th century. Instead of understanding texts Paz, Juan Rulfo, and the indigenous Nican Mopohua on the Virgin of
as mirrors of social reality, we will consider them as laboratories—spaces Guadalupe. All in English. No prerequisites.
for testing out, working through, or mixing up new ideas, categories, and COLT 0610G. Literature and the American Presidency.
ways of seeing and feeling. We will pay special attention to 20th-century We are accustomed to engaging the American presidency as a public
international avant-garde movements, including Futurism, Dadaism, and office approached through the prism of government, political science,
Surrealism, and we will explore the relation of the literary avant-garde to and the like. This course studies the presidency through a literary lens,
the avant-garde in painting, cinema, and music. focusing on four presidents and three literary genres: epistolography
COLT 0510P. Reading the Renaissance. (J. Adams and Jefferson), biography (Washington) and literary analysis
How do these works figure the renaissance as a cultural formation? (Lincoln). We will also study on video the inaugurals and farewells of
Petrarch, Rime Sparse; Boccaccio, Decameron; Castiglione, Book of the more recent presidents and, finally, examine non-traditional literary forms,
Courtier; Erasmus, Praise of Folly; Thomas More, Utopia; Machiavelli, such as pamphlets, songs, posters, broadsides, graphics, newspapers,
Prince, Mandragola; Wyatt and Ronsard (poems), Spenser, Faerie Queen magazines, and original documents from various presidential elections.
and Shepheardes Calender, Cervantes, Don Quixote. COLT 0610H. Renaissance Epic.
COLT 0510Q. How Poems See (ENGL 0100Q). Explores Renaissance attempts to renew, parody, and question the
Interested students must register for ENGL 0100Q. classical epic tradition. The study of poetics, narrative, and imagination will
be wedded to investigations of beauty, wonder, and nationhood. Authors
COLT 0510R. War and the Arts: Guantanamo, Twenty Years On.
will include Ariosto, Tasso, Ercilla, Spenser, Camões, du Bartas, and
In January 2002, the first captives in the so-called “War on Terror” were
Milton.
flown to the Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for indefinite periods
of detention that for some lasted over twenty years. More than a century COLT 0610I. Introduction to Cultural Studies.
earlier, in 1901, the Platt Amendment was signed into U.S. law, enabling We live in a cultural saturated with information. The messages we register,
the lease “in perpetuity” that gives the U.S. military exclusive use of the meanings we deduce, and the knowledge upon which we ground our
the forty-square mile naval station, despite the Cuban government’s actions and choices require critical examination if we are to engage as
objection. Participants in this seminar will assess the legal and political thoughtful actors in our personal and civic lives. This class will encourage
arguments that have structured “Guantánamo” as an exceptional space, students to reflect on their initial impressions of and reactions to various
of grave concern to human rights advocates and scholars. At the same media and will give them critical tools to examine how formal and thematic
time, however, and drawing on poetry, art and memoirs by detainees and strategies work to shape and elicit our sympathies, our desires, our fears,
military personnel at the base and by Cubans living near its border, we and our beliefs. Focusing primarily on visual and written texts drawn from
will consider an alternative Guantánamo of sympathies, solidarities and popular culture--video, print, film, and Web sources--students will practice
shared space. their analytical skills by evaluating these texts in classroom discussions,
several short writing assignments, and one longer essay. Reading the
work of several cultural theorists, students will learn to analyze persuasive
argumentation through an attention to rhetorical and framing devices and
to recognize and decipher visual cues, enabling them to interpret texts and
images and to produce coherent critical positions of their own. This class
will prepare participants for college courses that require them to process
knowledge and not simply acquire information.

Comparative Literature 5
6 Comparative Literature

COLT 0610L. Murder Ink: Narratives of Crime, Discovery, and Identity. COLT 0610Y. Women’s Writing in the Arab World.
Examines the narrative of detection, beginning with the great dramatic This course examines Arab women’s writing through the lenses of both
whodunit (and mystery of identity) Oedipus Rex. Literary texts which Arabic and Western feminist theory and criticism. Beginning with a survey
follow a trail of knowledge, whether to establish a fact (who killed Laius?) of pre-modern female literary personae in Arabic (the elegist, the mystic,
or reveal an identity (who is Oedipus?) follow in Sophocles' footsteps. the singing slave), we will then examine major figures in the early modern
We read Sophocles' intellectual children. Readings include: Hamlet, The feminist movement, modernist poetry, autobiography, film, and the novel.
Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Woman in White, and other classic No Arabic required; supplemental Arabic section may be offered at
novels and plays. We also analyse seminal films of the genre, including the discretion of the professor. Texts by Etel Adnan, Salwa Bakr, Hoda
Laura and Vertigo. Will include the twentieth-century detective story, with Barakat, Assia Djebar, Nazik al-Mala’ika, Alifa Rifaat, Hanan al-Shaykh,
particular attention to women writers and the genre of the female private Miral al-Tahawy, Fadwa Tuqan, Adania Shibli. Films by Moufida Tlatli,
eye. Annemarie Jacir.
Fall COLT0610L S01 19302 MWF 9:00-9:50(09) (M. Ierulli)
COLT 0610Z. Intersections of Race and Culture in the West.
COLT 0610N. Being There: Bearing Witness in Modern Times (ENGL This course will introduce students to ways in which knowledge, power
0710F). and race have been interrelated in understandings of culture and in
Interested students must register for ENGL 0710F. the writing and reception of literature. Beginning in antiquity, we will
trace a history of political, ethnic, and social groups’ perceptions and
COLT 0610O. The Death of the Subject in Twentieth and Twenty-first categorizations of each other and of shifts in the definitions of “race” and
Century Literature. “culture” as concepts. We will then consider changing ideas of alliance,
Examines the condition of the subject in Western novels and plays belonging and power, in the context of contemporary American and global
written after 1945. Traditional markers of identity in works of literature are politics. The course will draw from readings across various languages, and
being eroded by globalization, split families, the invasion of science in from the work and lectures of several guest speakers.
genetics, and increased mobility. Signs of this crisis include loss of agency
and individuality, various pathologies including schizophrenia, and the COLT 0611B. Global Detective Fiction.
replacement of humans with clones. We will investigate the intricacies of Though often marginalized as unserious or lowly “genre fiction,” the
the derailment of the subject and how literary form is affected in novels detective plot has interested and influenced literary figures ranging from
by Beckett, Coetzee, W. G. Sebald, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michel Houellebecq, Jorge Luis Borges and Thomas Pynchon to Tzvetan Todorov and Frederic
Chuck Palahniuk, and in plays by Caryl Churchill. Jameson. In this course, we examine both the origins and the afterlives of
the detective plot in fiction from around the world. We focus especially on
COLT 0610P. Stories and Storytelling. the figure of the detective as reader and the commentaries detective fiction
An introduction to stories, how they are constructed, and how they are offers on reading itself. After beginning with “classics” by Poe, Conan
told. We will explore the role of storytellers in the creation of a story, the Doyle, Chesterton, Chandler, we move on to examine select novels and
idea of “plot,” the forms that stories take, and the category of fiction itself— stories from Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, and Africa. At the end
in essence, how and why stories are made, and made up. Our discussion of the course, students will write a 10 to 15-page research paper on a topic
will range from topics such as fictional forms, the acts of reading and of of their choosing OR a detective story (or other creative project developed
telling, the role of memory, and the invention of self, to questions of time in consultation with the professor) of their own authorship.
and duration. Texts examined will be drawn from a variety of genres,
periods, and cultures. COLT 0611C. Literature and Judgment.
Investigates the intersections between acts of literature and acts of
COLT 0610Q. Before Wikipedia. judgment, between language and the law. How is literature to be judged,
How did humans organize knowledge before Wikipedia? This course when is it "good" or "bad"? Does literature lie, and if so, does it matter?
explores the fascinating history of encyclopedic texts, archives, and Does it hide a crime? And, in turn: does literature provide its own particular
databases in various cultural contexts. We consider issues of book history, kind of judgment, one that may make evident the very fictional status of
the classification of knowledge, and the obsession to collect, compile, and the law? Readings span from the Bible to contemporary post-colonial
document everything knowable and unknowable in both real and fictional readings (Rousseau, Tolstoy, Zola, Freud, Kafka, Arendt, Benjamin, Henry
encyclopedias. James, Primo Levi, Coetzee, Sadegh Hedayat).
COLT 0610S. Literature and Knowledge. COLT 0611D. Third World Literature and Thought 1950-1970.
What is knowledge? How do we know what we know? We will read literary This course offers an introduction to Third-Worldist thought and literature,
texts concerned with these questions to consider how knowledge relates focusing on the shifting relationship between the Soviet Union, anticolonial
to power, and how deception, stupidity, and mystification force us to nationalist movements, and leftist internationalist currents during the
question what we know. Readings include Austen, Hawthorne, Melville, years 1955-1973. How did literature contribute to the formation of the
Flaubert, James, and Schnitzler. Third-Worldist project, and how did the Third-Worldist project inform the
COLT 0610T. Chinese Empire and Literature. writing of literature? We will approach these questions by examining the
This course explores ancient and modern approaches to empire and role of conferences, print periodicals, and supranational organizations
imperialism, focusing on China from the Qin (221-206 BCE) establishment like the Afro-Asian Writers Association in shaping new understandings of
of unified empire through the Qing (1644-1911 CE) confrontation with the politicized function of literature. At the same time, we will pay close
the British and other European empires. Emphasis will be placed on the attention to the aesthetic categories and literary forms that mediated a
relation between imperial expansion and literary production, and the role powerful sense of solidarity between far-flung revolutionary actors.
of Chinese and non-Chinese literature in representing China’s multilingual Spr COLT0611D S01 26724 MWF 2:00-2:50(07) (M. Pabon)
and multiethnic past. Texts include China’s most famous work of historical
COLT 0611E. Banned Books.
literature, Sima Qian’s Shiji; poems, short stories, tomb sculptures,
When are reading and writing dangerous activities? Who gets to decide?
contemporary film; as well as critical essays on empire, colonization, and
And what are the consequences, for individuals and societies? In this
cross-cultural heritage.
seminar, we will explore works of fiction, poetry, autobiography and
COLT 0610U. Altered Cinema: The Cultural Politics of Film Revision children’s literature that have been banned, redacted or put on trial in the
(MCM 0901R). modern period; and think critically about the ideas of decency, protection
Interested students must register for MCM 0901R. and security that underlie such censorship. As we consider the role book
COLT 0610V. Claims of Fiction (ENGL 0150X). bans play in public life today, we will explore anti-censorship practices in
Interested students must register for ENGL 0150X. the arts, journalism, law and grassroots advocacy.
Fall COLT0611E S01 18846 TTh 1:00-2:20(06) (E. Whitfield)
COLT 0610W. Getting Emotional: Passionate Theories (ENGL 0500Q).
Interested students must register for ENGL 0500Q.

6 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 7

COLT 0710A. Women's Words: Writing in Medieval Europe and COLT 0710L. Storytelling: Verbal Art as Performance.
Japan. This course offers a comparative selection of oral and written folktales
An introduction to women poets, dramatists, and prose writers from from Arabic, Chinese, African, North American, and European traditions in
medieval court cultures, with an emphasis on what these authors show us translation in order to study the formation and reception of storytelling in
about their educational, social, moral/spiritual environment and civilization. different socio-cultural contexts (Western and non-Western, contemporary
What did the pen or writing brush enable them to express and achieve? and traditional). We will consider storytelling and associated performance
How were they able to negotiate the gaps between a male classical literary practice in the light of a variety of theoretical disciplines (e.g., rhetoric,
language and their own vernacular speech? Readings may include works folklore, sociolinguistics, performance studies, literary criticism,
by Christine de Pizan, Dhuoda, Heloise, Hildegard of Bingen, Hrotsvitha, narratology). There will be lectures, presentations, and videorecordings.
Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Marie de France, Murasaki Shikibu, COLT 0710N. A Comparative Introduction to the Literatures of the
Sei Shonagon, and Trotula plus shorter texts written by both men and Americas.
women. Instructor permission required. Considers the common links between the diverse literatures of North
COLT 0710B. Very Short Poetry: From Tanka to Twitter. and South America, approached in relation to one another rather than
Though implicit and explicit claims have been made for the novel as a to Eurocentric paradigms. Focuses on the treatment of such topics
universal form, the novel does not match the very short poem in terms of as the representation of the past and the self, the role of memory and
ubiquity across history and cultures. Reading a set of very short poems the imagination, the nature of literary language, and the questions of
each week, we will move across ages and continents, from Greek and alienation, colonialism and post-colonialism, communication versus
Latin epigrams to the Japanese “haiku” and its precursors, from the early silence, and fiction versus history in the works of selected writers from
modern sonnet to experiments with poetic constraints in the computer age. North and Latin America, including García-Márquez, Faulkner, Cortázar,
Primary sources will be juxtaposed to touchstones of theory, neat ideas, Allende, Lispector, Morrison, Doctorow, Rosa, and DeLillo. Enrollment
and provocative essays. All readings available in translation as well as in limited to 15 first year students.
the original. COLT 0710P. Women and Writing in Medieval France and Japan.
COLT 0710C. Introduction to Scandinavian Literature. An introduction to women poets and prose writers from early court
An introduction to major works of Scandinavian writers, painters and cultures, with emphasis on what these authors show us about their social
filmmakers over the past 150 years. Figures include Kierkegaard, Ibsen, environment and civilization. What did the pen or writing brush enable
Strindberg, Munch, Hamsun, Josephson, Södergran, Lagerkvist, Vesaas, them to express and achive? How were they able to negotiate the gaps
Cronqvist, Bergman, August and Vinterberg, as well as children's books by between a male classical literary language and their own vernacular
Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson. speech? What kinds of literary approaches and conventions were
perfected by them? How did they view their personal social status? What
COLT 0710D. Inventing the Renaissance.
educational, moral, and spiritual concerns did they voice? Readings: works
The invention of the Renaissance as a cultural formation and as a part of
by Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shônagon, Heloise, Marie de France, Christin de
the western cultural imaginary. We will consider the so-called "discovery
Pizan, plus shorter texts written by both men and women between 700 and
of man," humanism and the recovery of the classical past, the production
1450 C.E.
of scriptural identity or the "bibliographic ego," courtiership, the formation
of the early modern state and the discovery of the "new world" through COLT 0710Q. The Odyssey in Literature and Film.
readings of major English and continental writers of the period. Examines reincarnations of the Homeric figure of Odysseus in
contemporary literatures and film as modernist figure, postcolonial subject,
COLT 0710E. Japanese Literature and Society: Historical Survey of
and existentialist hero. How is the Odysseus myth altered from culture
Japanese Literature.
to culture (Greece, Rome, Ireland, the Caribbean)? How is it re-visioned
A reading of the major literary monuments, from early waka to Genji to
in different historical periods and from different perspectives (feminist,
the fiction of Ōe Kenzaburō. Surveys Japanese literary production from
marxist, postcolonial) and genres (epic, poetry, the novel, film, drama)?
the 8th century to the present, examining the formation of literary genres,
Major authors include Homer, Virgil, Tennyson, Joyce, Kazantzakis,
aesthetic values, and reading habits of successive eras in the context of
Cavafy, Seferis, Atwood, Walcott; criticism by Bakhtin, Edith Hall, Adorno,
political, social, and cultural development. No prerequisites.
Derrida. Films include works by Angelopoulos, the Coen brothers; Singer’s
COLT 0710F. Latin America: The French Connection. Usual Suspects, Mendes’ James Bond offering Skyfall, and Kubrick’s
Raises questions of intertexuality between French and Latin American 2001: Space Odyssey.
literature, focusing on how each represents the other. Beginning in the late Spr COLT0710QS01 26483 MWF 12:00-12:50(01) (V. Calotychos)
nineteenth century, questions aesthetic categories of the real, the surreal
and the marvelous/magical real; and literary responses to World War II COLT 0710S. Words and Images: A Survey of Japanese Literature.
and the Dirty War, the 1968 student protests in Paris and Mexico City, This survey course on Japanese literature will introduce works ranging
feminist movements, and globalization. from the 7th century AD to the present. This course will provide a historical
survey of classic and modern texts, while paying attention to the close
COLT 0710H. Mexican lettres, 1519-1968. relationship Japanese literature has had with visual culture from the
The course approaches the history of ideas in Mexico by examining four calligraphic poems of the Heian period to the postwar influence of manga
critical moments/moments of crisis in the country's development. We focus upon literature.
on the issues and burdens of the past as conceptualized in historical,
essayistic, and literary writings of the Conquest, the Baroque, the Mexican COLT 0710U. Leaves of Words: A Survey of Japanese Literature.
Revolution, and the iconoclastic 1960s. In English. While Zen, sushi and animé have become commonplaces in contemporary
American parlance, Japanese literature and culture remain static enigmas,
COLT 0710I. New Worlds: Reading Spaces and Places in Colonial conjuring up visions of stolid-faced samurai, cherry blossoms, and post-
Latin America. modern dystopias. In this survey of Japanese literary works from the 8th
An interdisciplinary journey-combining history, literature, art, film, century to the present, we will examine the development of canons of
architecture, cartography-through representations of the many worlds that literature, both poetry and prose, and aesthetics in specific social contexts
comprised the colonial Hispanic New World. We traverse the paradisiacal in Japanese cultural history. Also, we will consider their re-evaluations in
Antilles, the U.S. Southwest, Tenochtitlan/Mexico City, Lima, Potosí. We subsequent eras, raising questions about the stability and continuity of
read European, indigenous, and Creole writers, including: Columbus, Las such traditions. In addition to readings, we will briefly look at film, manga
Casas, Bernal Díaz, Aztec poets, Guaman Poma, Sor Juana. In English. and anime.
Excellent preparation for study abroad in Latin America. Enrollment limited
to 19 first year students.

Comparative Literature 7
8 Comparative Literature

COLT 0710V. The Arab World Writes Itself: Contemporary Arabic COLT 0711E. Reading and Writing African Gender.
Literature. In this course, we will examine ways that gender and literary genre
In his seminal work Orientalism, Edward Said paraphrases Marx, and figure in postcolonial African writing, and in its reception. We will closely
suggests that Orientalist attitudes towards the Middle East have produced read novels by four significant women authors: Mariama Bâ (Senegal),
a discourse in which the East must always be spoken for, and not allowed Zoe Wicomb (South Africa), Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), and
to represent itself. Said's argument has become even more relevant in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria). We will also read short, lesser-
the past decade, given the growing interest in the Middle East as a region known texts, such as Richard Rive's “Riva” and Binyavanga Wainaina's
in the US, coupled with a dearth of spaces where voices from the region “The Missing Chapter,” that question boundaries of gender, genre, and
can offer their own narratives. Designed as an introductory course to sexuality.
contemporary Arabic Literature, this course includes a variety of readings COLT 0711F. Arabic Literature: The Qur'an to Darwish.
in translation and films from across the Arab world; it foregoes an intense The course offers an introduction to Arabic literature from ancient Arabian
exploration of one national literature for a more varied survey of the textual poetry to contemporary Palestinian novels. Topics include desert poetry,
output of several countries. We will attempt to situate each literature the Qur’an, medieval Muslim court literature, popular literature, Arabic
within its national context and within the larger pan-Arab, regional and literary theory, and the emergence of modern Western genres, with a focus
international context while being sensitive to the political, geographical, on Palestinian literature as a test-case. We will engage first-hand with
and historical foces that have influenced these texts, including the rise of Imru’ al-Qays’ Qifa Nabki, al-Jahiz’s Books of Misers, Ibn Hazm’s theories
Arab nationalism and the independence struggles of the mid-twentieth about love, Mahmoud Darwish’s I Come from There, and Emile Habiby’s
century, and immigration. We will also examine--and hopefully question-- The Pessoptimist. All readings are in English.
some of the discursive themes and conceptual frames that have been
traditionally used to think about contemporary Arabic literature. Enrollment COLT 0711G. The Realist Novel (Europe, America, Latin America).
limited to 20. How did the 19th-century novel shift from at times idealistic descriptions of
domestic life to realist representations of individual, psychological, social,
COLT 0710W. Cultures of Colonialism: Palestine/Israel. and political “reality”? In this course on the realist novel, we will address
Examines the history and literary production of the Israeli-Palestinian how literary realism attempted a description of the world “as it was”: what
colonial encounter from 1948 to the present. Aims to delineate the deep were the social and political questions the realist novel took up? How
links between domestic culture and colonialism in Israel-Palestine by did it conceive gender and sexuality, and how did it account for issues of
raising questions about statehood, dispossession, and exclusion in the social inequality, colonialism, and other types of bourgeois ideology? What
imaginaries of both peoples and by examining novels in relation to the national projects did non-European novels engage in, particularly in Latin
ethical and political imperatives of settler-colonial dynamics. Authors America and the United States?
include: David Grossman, Emile Habibi, Jabra I. Jabra, Sahar Khalifah,
Kanafani, Amos Oz, and A. B. Yehoshua. Sophomore seminar. Enrollment COLT 0711H. The Arabic Novel.
limited to 20 sophomores. This course offers students both a foundation in the “classics” of Arabic
fiction and a foray into recent experimentations with form and langauge.
COLT 0710X. Fan Fiction. We’ll spend the first half of the semester with Egyptian Nobel laureate
What is imitation (sincerest form of flattery) to literary canons? Vergil’s Naguib Mahfouz, tracing his evolution from Victor Hugo-esque chronicler
Aeneid appropriated Aeneas from the Iliad, Joyce’s Ulysses modernized of life in Cairo to Faulknerian experimentalist. We’ll then examine the
the Odyssey. Admiration as a source of inspiration is a major force in works of authors who deem themselves “post-Mahfouzian,” including
the evolution of fiction. ”Fan Fiction” explores intriguing characters in Gamal al-Ghitani, Sonallah Ibrahim, Elias Khoury, and Hanan al-Shaykh.
greater detail and new contexts, allowing them new lives in contemporary Students will emerge with a transnational, inclusive understanding of the
imagination. This course presents pairs or sets of works that are explicitly Middle East glimpsed through the region's literature. No Arabic necessary;
linked by the intimate relation of imitation. Classic readings will be paired students with Arabic may read in the original.
with their mostly contemporary updates, including Pride and Prejudice/
Murder at Pemberley, Heart of Darkness/State of Wonder, and Monkey/ COLT 0711J. The Art of Revolution in Latin America.
Tripmaster Monkey. This course considers the role of the arts—visual, literature, music, film,
Spr COLT0710X S01 26351 TTh 1:00-2:20(08) (D. Levy) and performance—in Latin American social movements. We will study the
work of artists and activists in the Mexican Revolution, Cuban Revolution,
COLT 0710Z. Comedy from Athens to Hollywood. Nicaraguan Revolution, South American dictatorship resistances, and
This course will look at ancient comedy from its birth in Athens and Rome contemporary social movements such as the Chilean student movement
through Renaissance incarnations to the 19th and 20th century, including and narco-trafficking. We will trace the use of the arts in organizing, social
novels and films as well as plays. We will survey the main topics of critique, collective action, and propaganda, and how they have shaped
comedy, from Aristophanes' focus on the absurdities of daily and political ideology and culture in Latin America and beyond.
life in Athens to the Roman codification of a genre of everyman in love and
in trouble. We will also examine how later writers and filmmakers use both COLT 0711K. Arab Voices beyond the Middle East: Cultural
traditions to give comedy its subversive power of social commentary. Encounters in Europe and the Americas.
This course introduces students to literature by Arabs writing outside of
COLT 0711A. Epics of India (CLAS 0820). their country of origin and in relation to a new cultural landscape, in the
Interested students must register for CLAS 0820. US, Britain, Canada, and Brazil. We will explore, through poems, short
COLT 0711B. Ishiguro, Amongst Others (ENGL 0710L). stories, novels, films, and music, the themes of exile, assimilation, gender,
Interested students must register for ENGL 0710L. sexuality and war in transnational and transcultural contexts. Authors
include: Rawi Haje, Etel Adnan, Rabih Alameddine, Ahdaf Sueif, and Saad
COLT 0711C. Postcolonial Tales of Transition (ENGL 0710E). Elkhadem.
Interested students must register for ENGL 0710E.
COLT 0711L. The Quran and its Readers.
COLT 0711D. Comparative Approaches to the Literatures of Brazil Like the Bible, the Quran has had a monumental impact upon world
and the United States (POBS 0850). literature. Its narratives and imagery permeate the textual, visual, and
Interested students must register for POBS 0850. auditory landscapes of many societies in the Islamic world and beyond.
In this course, we approach the Quran through the works of some of its
most interesting readers, including Jami, Dante, Rumi, Hafez, Goethe, and
Rushdie. All readings are in English.
COLT 0711M. Off the Beaten Path: A Survey of Modern Japanese
Literature (EAST 0800).
Interested students must register for EAST 0800.

8 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 9

COLT 0711O. Off the Beaten Path: The Diversity of Modern Japanese COLT 0810E. Confession, Autobiography, Testimony.
Literature. Does writing a life give it coherence and veracity, or create a fiction?
An introduction to major and minor works of Japanese literature produced What is the relationship between first-person narrative and truth, and
during the Japanese Empire and in post-WWII Japan. Canonical writers between authorship and authority? How does the form of a first-person
include Tanizaki Junichiro, Higuchi Ichiyo and Kawabata Yasunari, as text -- a religious confession, a personal journal, a political denunciation,
well as contemporary novelists Ogawa Yoko, Murata Sayaka and others, a collective memoir -- affect the telling? Must the reader of such an
including women, queers, revolutionaries and Japan-resident Koreans. account be "you" to the teller's "I", and how does the intimacy of this
Close reading skills will be emphasized, as well as an understanding of relationship shape the experience of reading? In this course, we test the
how literature has generated knowledge about race, ethnicity, gender, limits of self-narration against ethical and physical limits, reading first-
class and their intersections. person narratives that purport to be non-fictional. We will read accounts
of different experiences -- social and sexual transgression, suffering and
COLT 0711Q. Writing Love in Korean Literature.
perpetrating violence, slavery -- and explore both the possibilities and
This course looks at literature to explore how intimacy, passion and
duplicities of writing as "I".
commitment have been socially sanctioned and redefined in Korea.
From Yi Dynasty tales to modern-day webtoons, we will explore the roles COLT 0810F. Desire and the Marketplace.
different genres have played in the generation of forms of human affect Studies love and desire as the interplay between men, women, and money
that are themselves intimately tied to Korea's tumultuous history. What in mercantilized societies, in seventeenth century Japan, eighteenth
does it mean to love, and to write about love, under the conditions of Neo- century England, nineteenth century France, and twentieth century
Confucianism, empire, war, national division, authoritarianism, and the Africa. Novels featuring female protagonists by Saikaku, Defoe, Flaubert,
neoliberal marketplace? No prerequisites. Emecheta and Bâ, readings in economic and feminist theory, and visual
art--Japanese woodcuts, Hogarth, nineteenth century French painting,
COLT 0711R. Writing and Resistance in Indigenous America (1500–
West African arts.
1700).
Material extraction, forced religious conversion, and physical brutality were COLT 0810G. Equity Law Literature Philosophy.
but a few of the oppressive acts imposed on the Indigenous populations Justice, rigorously applied, yields injustice. This paradox haunted
of the Americas by Western colonialism. However, those under Iberian Western aspirations toward legal and political justice from antiquity to the
and British Rule—in Peru, Mexico and New England—found ways to Renaissance. It necessitated the formulation of a complementary principle,
resist and negotiate the terms of domination by adopting, and therefore equity, whose job it was to correct or supplement the law in cases where
adapting, European forms and norms. This class takes an interdisciplinary the strict application of it would lead to unfairness. In England, equity was
approach that combines historiography, literature, and art, to analyze the enforced by a separate system of law, and it was a weighty, ambiguous
mechanisms of Indigenous resistance within the developing structures of term of great emotional force, with a particular appeal to Shakespeare.
colonialism: race, religion, geography, and gender. We will read a variety After its decline, Dickens and Kafka wrote two of the greatest literary
of texts that originate from Aztec, Inca, Algonquian, Spanish, Brazilian, works set in a world without equity.
and British contexts. All readings available in English, but students are COLT 0810H. How Not to Be a Hero.
welcome to read any in the original language. One of Shakespeare’s greatest plays is about a character who was an
Fall COLT0711R S01 18845 MWF 12:00-12:50(15) ’To Be Arranged'
irredeemable failure: Coriolanus. What can failure teach us? What kind
COLT 0810A. Ancient Greek Myth in Modern Poetry. of strength does a language of failure possess? We will read the ancient
Various responses to ancient Greek myths by poets in the Western sources themselves (Livy, Lucian, Plutarch), and modern adaptations of
tradition, especially modern Greek. Considers how poets since 1800 have these stories (Bertolt Brecht, T. S. Eliot, Günter Grass). We will also look at
approached, rewritten, or subverted the classical version of myths, such as other “exemplary” failures who inspired Shakespeare and later literature,
those of Eurydice, Helen, Orpheus, Persephone, Penelope, and Ulysses. including Lucullus and Timon.
Emphasizes the challenges posed by the past, issues of cultural and Fall COLT0810H S01 18347 TTh 9:00-10:20(05) (K. Haynes)
political context, and questions of gender. Readings in English. COLT 0810I. Tales and Talemakers of the Non-Western World.
COLT 0810C. Arthurian Tales and Romances of the Middle Ages. Examines many forms of storytelling in Asia, from the Epic of Gilgamesh
Why did stories of King Arthur, his knights, and their ladies fascinate and the Arabian Nights Entertainments to works of history and fiction in
writers and audiences throughout Europe? What can Arthurian quests, China and Japan. The material is intended to follow the evolution of non-
marvels, and love adventures tell us about successive pre-modern western narratives from mythological, historical and fictional sources in a
societies that shaped them? What are our responses to their cultural variety of cultural contexts. Topics will include myth and ritual, the problem
beliefs and forms of playful make-believe? Readings (in modern of epic, tales of love and the fantastic, etc.
translation) of medieval Latin, French, English, Welsh, and German texts. COLT 0810J. The Colonial and Postcolonial Marvelous.
COLT 0810D. City (B)Lights. A celebration and critique of the marvelous in South American and related
Interdisciplinary explorations of the modern urban experience featuring literatures (U.S., Caribbean). We follow the marvelous from European
social sciences, literature and film. Convergences and differences in the exoticizing of the New World during the colonial period to its postcolonial
presentation of urban life in literature, film, the visual arts, urban planning, incarnations in 'magical realism' and beyond. We attend particularly to
and social sciences, including sociology, political economy, urban ecology. the politics and marketing of the marvelous, in writers including Borges,
City populations, bureaucracy, power groups, alienation, urban crowds, the Chamoiseau, Columbus, García Márquez, Fuguet. Reading in English or
city as site of the surreal, are central themes. Against the background of Spanish.
classic European urban images, American cities and literary works will be COLT 0810L. The Pursuit of Happiness.
brought to the foreground. This course will study the emergence of the modern concept of happiness
from the ancient ideal of the "good life" to the notion of "pursuit of
happiness" as an "inalienable right." We will trace the development of this
concept in the early modern period and read representations of the search
for happiness in a variety of literary, philosophical, and political texts
(including the American and the Haitian Declarations of Independence
and the French Declaration of Rights). Readings will include oriental and
fairly tales, novels, and essays (by Mme d'Aulnoy, Mme du Chatelet,
Montesquieu, Johnson, Fielding, Voltaire, and Rousseau, among others).
Enrollment limited to 19 first year students.
Fall COLT0810L S01 18357 TTh 2:30-3:50(12) (O. Mostefai)

Comparative Literature 9
10 Comparative Literature

COLT 0810M. Uncanny Tales: Narratives of Repetition and COLT 0811I. Classical Mythology and the Western Tradition.
Interruption. Reads classical texts that expound the fundamental mythological
What makes stories creepy? Close readings of short narratives with stories and elements of the Western tradition, then will read selected
special attention to how formal and thematic elements interact to produce texts from the Renaissance through the twentieth century that utilize
the effects of uncertainty, anxiety and incoherence peculiar to "the these myths. Ancient texts covered will include the Epic of Gilgamesh,
uncanny." Topics include: the representation of the self in images of the Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and
arts; the representation of speech; instabilities of identity and spatial and plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Later texts will include
temporal boundaries; doubles, monsters, automata and hybrids. Texts Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece, Milton's "Lycidas,"
selected from: Walpole, Shelley, Hoffmann, Kleist, Poe, Dostoyevsky, and lyric poetry by Keats, Shelley, Browning, Swinburne, Rilke, Auden,
Freud, Wilde, Cortazar, Kafka, Lovecraft. and Yeats. This course is suitable for anyone wishing to understand the
classical background to Western literature.
COLT 0810O. Civilization and Its Discontents.
Investigates the age-old tension between order and chaos as a central COLT 0811M. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: Travel and Transport
dynamic in the making and interpretation of literature. Texts will be drawn in Modern Literature and the Arts.
from drama, fiction and poetry from Antiquity to the present. Authors This course studies how new modes of transportation and the experiences
include Sophocles, Shakespeare, Racine, Beckett, Prevost, Bronte, they enabled stood as symbols of both the fears and joys of rapid
Faulkner, Morrison, Blake, Whitman, Dickinson, and Rich. modernization in 19th- and 20th-century literature, film, and visual art.
How did the speeding locomotive, the plane's aerial view, and the personal
COLT 0810P. Moderns and Primitives.
freedom of the automobile transform the ways people traversed space,
Modernism has been called a 'Renaissance of the Archaic'. We will
experienced time, traded, and came into contact with one another? In
read from the major works of Anglo-American modernism (Eliot, Joyce,
formal terms, how did these experiences inspire innovations in the media
Lawrence, Pound), focusing on their attitudes toward the primitive and
we examine by Whitman, Kipling, Baudelaire, Marinetti, Brecht, Woolf,
the archaic. In addition, we will examine anthropological theories from the
Huxley, Stein, Ruttman, Wegman, Picabia, Duchamp and others? No
Victorian period to Durkheim, explore primitivism in modernist music and
prerequisites.
painting, and read about recent controversies surrounding modernism and
primitivism. COLT 0811N. Poetics of Madness: Aspects of Literary Insanity.
This course surveys a wide range of literary texts with a view to tracing
COLT 0810U. Lovers, Slaves, Kings and Knaves: Major Plays in
the long process of transition from pre-modern to modern conceptions
Western Literature.
of madness on the one hand, and to identifying the symbolic logic and
This course will introduce students to representative tragedies and
discursive modalities that underlie its respective representations on
comedies, focusing in particular upon their development as literary genres;
the other. Spanning several centuries of artistic preoccupation with the
continuities and variations of character, plot, and theme; stage and
alienated mind, these texts will serve as points of reference in a focused
performance conventions; and the classical tradition. Readings will include
exploration of the relationship between insanity and literature, as it has
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Racine,
been shaped by social dynamics, cultural norms, philosophical ideas,
Eilde, Ibsen, and Vogel.
and medical theories. Authors include Euripides, Erasmus, Shelley,
COLT 0810X. European Renaissances. Dostoyevsky, Stevenson, and Woolf.
Just what is the European renaissance and when and how did it happen
COLT 0811Q. Mediterranean Cities.
and who decided? Let's look at the renaissances of Petrarch, Boccaccio,
Athens, Istanbul, Alexandria: three iconic cities of the Levant that will serve
and Giotto, of Erasmu, and Thomas More and Holbein, of Machiavelli and
as points of reference in a focused exploration of East Mediterranean
Castiglione and Raphael. Are these renaissances intellectual, aesthetic,
history and culture. Reads and discusses a number of texts that span
visual, rhetorical? Did they happen in the fourteenth century, the fifteenth,
several decades and a wide range of styles and genres – from realism to
the sixteenth? Or in the nineteenth when they were first clearly described?
postmodernism and from autobiography to thriller – but exhibit a common
COLT 0810Z. Myth and Literature. interest in the urban landscape and its relationship to basic aspects of
Authors throughout the ages have been fascinated by ancient mythology human existence: identity and ideology, memory and desire, isolation and
and have incorporated elements of it into their texts, often modifying connection, hope and fear, life and death. Authors include Theotokas,
commenting on or even destroying the original myth in the process. Seferis, Taktsis, Durrell, Mahfouz, Kharrat, Tanpinar, Shafak, Altun.
This course will investigate the values, dangers and limitations of myth-
COLT 0811T. Statelessness and Global Media: Citizens, Foreigners,
making/using in literature. Primary texts will include major works by
Aliens (MCM 0901K).
Milton, Goethe, Kleist, Racine and Kafka. Texts will be supplemented
by secondary readings and multimedia elements. Students will learn to Interested students must register for MCM 0901K.
question and engage critically with the historical, cultural, literary and COLT 0811W. The Myth of Venice in Literature: Memory, Desire and
scientific frontiers that separate myth and reality. Assignments will include Death.
two short papers and a final paper. This course will explore the myth of Venice in literature: focusing on the
topos of Venice in the genre of travel writing, we will study the theme of
COLT 0811A. Introduction to Modernism: Past, Future, Exile, Home
liberty and decadence associated with Venice’s theatrical and political
(ENGL 0700F).
culture. Readings will include Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice,
Interested students must register for ENGL 0700F.
excerpts from De Brosses’s Travels through Italy, Goldoni’s Memoirs,
COLT 0811C. Belonging and Displacement: Cross-Cultural Identities Rousseau’s Confessions, and Casanova’s Histoire de ma vie. We will also
(POBS 0810). study the influence of these accounts on the Romantic poets (Goethe,
Interested students must register for POBS 0810. Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Musset), and modernity (Henry James’s
COLT 0811F. Writing War (ENGL 0100M). The Aspern Papers, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Donna Leone’s
Interested students must register for ENGL 0100M. Death at the Fenice).

COLT 0811G. Literature, Trauma, and War (ENGL 0500L). COLT 0811Y. Great Jewish Books (JUDS 0681).
Interested students must register for ENGL 0500L. Interested students must register for JUDS 0681.

COLT 0811H. Monuments and Monsters: Greek Literature and

Archaeology.
Surveys Greek archaeology from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period,
and reads Greek literature roughly contemporary with the archaeological
period surveyed, with an emphasis on epic and drama. No previous
knowledge or prerequisites needed.

10 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 11

COLT 0811Z. Islands in the Western Imaginary: Paradise, Periphery, COLT 0812P. Banned Books of Middle East.
Prison. From Danish cartoons and fatwas to student protests and the stabbing
Paradise, periphery, or prison? The representation of the island has been of a Nobel laureate, in this course we will study several literary scandals
described as imaginary and not actual, mythological and not geographical. that have rocked the Middle East since the mid-twentieth century. Our
Examines the fascination with islands in the western cultural imaginary. focus will be not only on the content and form of the texts themselves,
Selective readings from literature, film and historical texts focus on ways but also on the historical, political, social, and cultural circumstances in
in which island spaces have been represented in diverse social, national, which literature comes to have meaning for particular social and religious
imperial contexts as well as the effect of such projections on the native communities. Texts by Naguib Mahfouz, Sonallah Ibrahim, Salman
islanders, their visitors and often subjugators. Authors may include Rushdie, Ahmed Naji, Mohammed Choukri, Magdy al-Shafee, Susan
Homer, Plato, Marco Polo, Mandeville, Darwin, Defoe, Tournier, Kincaid, Abulhawa.
Kafka, Durrell, Seferis; theoretical works drawn from critical geography, COLT 0812Q. Film Classics: Greeks on the Silver Screen (MGRK
postcolonialism, and the field of island studies. 0810).
Fall COLT0811Z S01 18507 T 4:00-6:30(07) (V. Calotychos)
Interested students must register for MGRK 0810.
COLT 0812A. Hamlet Post-Hamlet. COLT 0812R. Reimagining the Americas: Latinx and Indigenous
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is perhaps the most widely read, performed, Stories of Migration.
adapted, parodied and imitated literary text of the western tradition. In This course explores migration stories that reimagine the territory known
this seminar we will begin by reading/re-reading the play before turning today as the Americas, Abya Yala, Turtle Island, and Ixachitlān. It brings
to a number of appropriations of Shakespeare, both in the west and non- together narrators who call into question the idea of the nation and the
west, in order to address social and aesthetic issues including questions mechanism of borders. What role does language play in community
of meaning and interpretation, intertextuality and cultural translation. First building as Native peoples face diasporas and become transnational
Year Seminar. Enrollment limited to 19. networks? How is mobility bringing forth new forms of storytelling? By
COLT 0812B. What is Colonialism? Archives, Texts and Images. engaging with poetry, essays, films and artwork from Indigenous and
Through a close reading of a variety of texts and images from 16th-19th Latinx writers, class discussions will try to understand Abya Yala in its full
century we will study the transformation of lands and people into complexity. We will pay particular attention to how our course materials
appropriable objects and the formation of political regimes in and through depict the environment as they address questions of land ownership,
different colonial projects. We will follow the encoding of slavery in literary settler colonialism and ties to homelands. Readings will be provided in
works, in the corpus of laws, in travelers’ visual renditions and in the English and include Leslie Marmon Silko, Yásnaya Aguilar Gil, Natalie
bodies of people. We will use the archive as a source and a site for the Díaz and Yuri Herrera.
production of knowledge. Students will create small textual and visual COLT 0812S. Non-human Rights and Wrongs.
archives around different topics, and will use them in writing their final “Even the creature has rights,” says Campion in HBO's Raised by Wolves.
work. Our course will ask after the past, present and future of rights, including
COLT 0812D. Mythology of India (CLAS 0850). interpreting literature, television and film to imagine who (or what) might
Interested students must register for CLAS 0850. one day possess them. Only persons have rights, but the essence of
personhood flickers and blurs like a phantom, somehow common to
COLT 0812E. God and Poetry (JUDS 0820). corporations, human beings, boats and cities, among other "things." Like
Interested students must register for JUDS 0820. ghost-hunting lawyers we'll trace the word "person" from the Ancient
COLT 0812G. The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict in History, Literature, Greek theater mask (prosopon) through Christianity's thought of the
Film. Trinity (God as "one substance, three persons") up to contemporary
An examination of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the lens of legal cases regarding animal rights such as the 'monkey selfie' case. Key
cultural production. The course will explore the history of the conflict, from authors include: Kafka, Cixous, Plato, Shelley, Chevillard, Zizioulas. Media
the 1947 partition of Palestine to the second Intifada in 2005, through screened includes: Blade Runner 2049, Solaris, Caprica. Students from all
major literary works and films juxtaposed with cultural and historical disciplines are welcome.
texts. We will discuss the way that literature and film provide us with COLT 0812T. Hideous Monsters of the Mind: Monster Literature,
humanistic and counterhegemonic narratives, interrogating issues such Monster Theory, and American Identities.
as nationalism, ethnicity, gender, colonialism, collective trauma and What do ancient beliefs about headless men and giants have in common
cultural resistance. Exploring the tension between historic and aesthetic with rap music and free love? Strangely enough, a single word has been
production, we will look at how literary and cinematic works challenge, re- used to refer to each: “monster.” In this course, we examine how monsters
imagine and supplement political accounts of the conflict. from European literary and intellectual traditions are translated into
COLT 0812K. Film Classics: The Greeks on the Silver Screen (MGRK American culture. We begin with a survey of pre-modern traditions: the
0810). “Monstrous Races” described by Pliny the Elder, the prodigies of Aristotle
Interested students must register for MGRK 0810. and Cicero, and the biological/medical tradition that was extrapolated
from a hybrid reading of Hippocrates and Macrobius. After following these
COLT 0812M. Hamlet Post-Hamlet (ENGL 0150Z).
traditions in Medieval and Early Modern writing, the bulk of the course
Interested students must register for ENGL 0150Z.
reads from key moments in American history where resurrected monsters
COLT 0812N. Film Classics: The Greeks on the Silver Screen (MGRK policed (and infiltrated) the boundaries of emerging American notions of
0810). identity and difference: from white supremacist pseudoscience to black
Interested students must register for MGRK 0810. abolitionism, and from “freak shows” to postmodern performance art.
COLT 0812O. Reading Art in Literature.
This course will explore the role of art objects in poetry and prose from
East Asia and the west. How are objects represented in literature, and
how does the language of art inform texts? Authors from antiquity to today
have described works of art in their texts to reveal essential aspects of
their cultures: heroic destiny, fatal struggles between life and art, and
glimpses of the sublime. Readings include ekphrasis from antiquity, poetry
from East Asia and the west, and fiction by Wilde, Balzac, Hawthorne,
selections from The Tale of Genji and The Dream of the Red Chamber,
and others.

Comparative Literature 11
12 Comparative Literature

COLT 0812U. Beyond Yellowness: Representations of Race and COLT 1020. What Is Friendship?.
Ethnicity in East Asia. Friendship is one of the most significant yet highly vexing experiences of
What do race and ethnicity mean to regions outside Europe and North our human existence. What does it mean to have or to be a friend? How
America? How did the perceptions of different physiological and cultural do friendship and romantic love relate? Why are writers as different as
features define premodern and modern East Asia? Since when and for Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Derrida so intensely drawn to the statement
what reasons did some people, whom Marco Polo considered “white,” attributed to Aristotle: “Oh my friends, there are no friends”? Why does
become racially Asian or yellow in literary and cinematic representations? Heidegger’s notion of “Being-With” invoke an ear that listens for the
This survey course will demystify East Asian homogeneity and discuss voice of the friend? To what extent is intimate friendship always also an
how various literary, cinematic, and critical works from antiquity up to the experience of anticipated mourning, in which a friend imagines himself
modern era present notions and issues related to race and ethnicity in the crying over the death of another? Is an enemy a fallen friend? This
region now known as East Asia. The reading material will include excerpts course will trace key concepts of friendship through the Western tradition,
from The Zuo Tradition, The Travels of Marco Polo, Bai Juyi, Min Jin Lee, spending quality time with a number of highly influential writers and
Orientalism, and others. The course will be taught in English, and no prior thinkers, both ancient and modern. All students welcome.
knowledge of Asian cultures or languages is required. COLT 1021. Literature and Photography: Writing and Thinking with
Spr COLT0812U S01 26884 MWF 9:00-9:50(02) ’To Be Arranged'
Light.
COLT 0812W. The Epic Tradition: from Homer to Milton. "I didn't draw any people," Kafka once wrote, "I told a story. Those are
This course will engage with the epic tradition from its origins in the pictures, only pictures...one takes photographs of things in order to forget
ancient eastern Mediterranean to the early modern period. Epic, as them. My stories are a way of closing my eyes." Kafka's sentences invite
the earliest genre and example of ancient literature in the Western us to reflect upon the relationship between literature, photography, and
canon, is foundational to our ideas of literature and our myths of society, philosophical thought—from the first heliograph in 1826 and the inception
national identity, and aspirational achievement. In this course we will of the daguerreotype in 1839 to the digital image of today. Taking as
read Gilgamesh, the earliest Near Eastern epic, the Iliad, the Aeneid, and our point of departure the relation of literature and "light-writing," we will
selections from the Odyssey, the epics that formed the cores of ancient address selected issues in the historical and conceptual interaction among
Greek and Roman literature, as well as medieval and early modern epics word, image, and critical thought. Our wager: texts and photographic
(Inferno, Paradise Lost) that draw on these rich and influential traditions. images share a common relationship to time, desire, death, mourning,
and politics. Writers may include Kafka, Proust, Benjamin, Kracauer,
COLT 0812X. Culture, Climate, and the Anthropocene’s Others. Barthes, Heidegger, and Derrida. Images by photographers including
Using the theoretical framework of the Anthropocene, this course August Sander and Andrew Moore. Students from diverse fields welcome.
considers a wide array of aesthetic codes—from Ovidian elegy and
Shakespearean tragicomedy to zombie narrative and postcolonial ghost COLT 1210. Introduction to the Theory of Literature.
stories—to investigate how distinct cultural forms contest, recast, and, at An historical introduction to problems of literary theory from the classical
times, reinstate the (often-hierarchical) boundaries between human and to the postmodern. Issues to be examined include mimesis, rhetoric,
nature, human and animal, and human and human. Through a sampling hermeneutics, history, psychoanalysis, formalisms and ideological criticism
of poetry, narrative, and film, we will explore the uneven terrain of the (questions of race, gender, sexuality, postcolonialism). Primarily for
Anthropocene, in which the feedback loops of race, class, gender, and advanced undergraduates. Lectures, discussions; several short papers.
other forms of social difference, along with geography itself, continue Spr COLT1210 S01 26352 MWF 11:00-11:50(04) (S. Bernstein)
to separate humans, even as evidence mounts for the inseparability of COLT 1310B. Classics of Indian Literature (CLAS 1160).
humans from the rest of the planet, including its nonhuman inhabitants. Interested students must register for CLAS 1160.
Course materials will be provided in English and include works from Ishirō
Honda, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, Tommy Orange, J.M. Coetzee, COLT 1310C. Twentieth-Century Western Theatre and Performance
and Bong Joon-Ho, among others. (TAPS 1250).
Spr COLT0812X S01 26584 TTh 10:30-11:50(09) ’To Be Arranged' Interested students must register for TAPS 1250.
COLT 0812Y. Love and Longing across the Indian Subcontinent. COLT 1310D. Between Gods and Beasts: The Renaissance Ovid
The Indian subcontinent is home to several languages and contains one (ENGL 1360S).
of the most strikingly diverse and vibrant bodies of literature spanning Interested students must register for ENGL 1360S.
several centuries and a wide geographic landscape. The aim of this COLT 1310E. A Classical Islamic Education: Readings in Arabic
course is to introduce you to primary texts such as poems and narrative Literature.
works in various languages (in translation) that provide a glimpse into the This seminar introduces students to the essential texts of a classical
types of love—romantic, devotional, filial, platonic among others—and education in the Arabic-Islamic world. What works of poetry, literary
the theories and prescriptive texts that accompany them. From ancient criticism, belletristic prose, biography, geography, history, and other
sensual Sanskrit and Tamil Sangam love poems to multilingual Bhakti disciplines were considered staples of a well-rounded education in
verses, Marathi abhangs and Kannada vacanas; from Urdu and Persian medieval Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, or Fez? Emphasis will be placed
ghazals to Indian cinema, this course combines literary texts with visual on close and patient readings of primary sources. At least three years of
materials and performance arts to acquaint you with the various moods Arabic required.
and expressions of love in the subcontinent and demonstrate the symbiotic
and inextricably intertwined relationship between various media in the COLT 1310G. Silk Road Fictions.
region. The course introduces students to cross-cultural comparative work, and
to critical issues in East-West studies in particular. We will base our
COLT 1001A. Troubled Origins: Accounting for Oneself (Nietzsche to conversations on a set of texts related to the interconnected histories and
Eribon). hybrid cultures of the ancient Afro-Eurasian Silk Roads. Readings will
What does it mean to account for one’s life by accounting for one’s include ancient travel accounts (e.g., the Chinese novel Journey to the
origins? Nietzsche, for one, expressed the “uniqueness” of his existence West, Marco Polo); modern fiction and film (e.g., Inoue Yasushi, Wole
“in the form of a riddle”: “As my father I have already died, as my mother Soyinka); and modern critical approaches to the study of linguistic and
I still live and grow old.” We will study literary and philosophical attempts literary-cultural contact (e.g., Lydia Liu, Emily Apter, Mikhail Bakhtin,
at catching up with one’s troubled origins, including Nietzsche’s _Ecce Edward Said). Topics will include bilingual texts, loanwords, race and
Homo: How One Becomes What One Is_ (self-interpretation); Freud’s heritage, Orientalism. No prior knowledge of the topic is expected and all
“Selbstdarstellung” (self-portraiture); Kafka’s "Letter to Father" (paternal texts will be available in English.
confessions); Derrida’s _Monolingualism of the Other_ (native languages Fall COLT1310GS01 18349 M 3:00-5:30(03) (T. Chin)
and lost origins); Eribon’s _Returning to Reims_ (“class closet”).
Undergraduates from diverse fields welcome. COLT 1310H. Classics of Indian Literature (CLAS 1160).
Interested students must register for CLAS 1160.

12 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 13

COLT 1310I. Modern African Literature (ENGL1710J). COLT 1330M. Transatlantic Surrealisms (FREN 1330E).
Interested students must register for ENGL 1710J. Interested students must register for FREN 1330E.
COLT 1310J. The Arab Renaissance. COLT 1410A. All the World's a Stage: Seventeenth-Century Drama.
Explores the 19th-century Arabic cultural renaissance known as the Readings of representative English and continental plays of the 17th
Nahda. Topics include intellectual encounters between Europe and century including Shakespeare, Jonson, Corneille, Molière, Tasso,
the Middle East, the birth of the Arabic novel, and the rise of Islamic Calderon, and others. How do dramatists represent and negotiate
modernism. We will read selections from the works of Shidyaq, Tahtawi, oppositions between art and nature, imagination and reason, myth and
Zaydan, Shawqi, Bustani, and others, alongside historiographical and history, freedom and fate through dramatic form and metaphor? Why is the
theoretical texts. At least three years of Arabic required. stage such a powerful metaphor for the world?
Spr COLT1310J S01 26353 W 3:00-5:30(10) (E. Muhanna)
COLT 1410B. Chinese Opera: Aesthetics and Politics of the
COLT 1310K. History of the Romance Languages (FREN 1020B). Performing Body.
Interested students must register for FREN 1020B. Explores traditional Chinese drama, which has always been a music
theater, from the perspective of contemporary cultural theory, and in a
COLT 1310L. Political Commitment in Modern Arabic Literature.
comparative and interdisciplinary context. Analyzing classical plays in
This course will explore the history of and debates surrounding political relation to their staging in today's regional operas, this course will first
consciousness and commitment in modern Arabic literature. We will examine the dialectics of "prettiness and artistry" in traditional Chinese
trace the diverse literary strategies by which authors, living under difficult theater aesthetics and its implications in gender politics. It will then
political circumstances, expressed their criticisms and envisioned social move on to investigate issues of cross-dressing and erotic desire in
and political justice. Beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to Chinese drama of the late imperial period in comparison with that of
the present, we will read and discuss landmark works of Arabic fiction in early modern England. Lastly, the ramifications of Chinese opera as a
translation, and the debates that surround them. Authors include: Etel national imagination in modern cultural politics, as embodied in the playM.
Adnan, Sonallah Ibrahim, Sahar Khalifeh, Tayeb Salih, and Hasan Blasim. Butterfly,the film Farewell My Concubine,and the Beijing opera version
COLT 1310N. Global Modernism and Crisis. ofTurandot, will be addressed.
The early twentieth century was marked by a proliferation of crises in COLT 1410C. Chinese Theatre in the Mao Years.
politics, the economy, language, indeed in the very fabric of society. This course focuses on two major issues: policing traditional theater and
This interdisciplinary course will insist on the global dimension of crisis, "model revolutionary drama" as "a new proletarian culture." The course
analyzing how modernist artists in the metropolis and the periphery will begin with a study of Mao Zedong's ideas on literature and art in
represented this situation in different, yet overlapping ways. We will also the light of contemporary cultural theory. It will then look at examples of
examine how modernist works provide unique ways of thinking about what the "new opera" and "new history play," examining them in relation to a
is lost in a moment of crisis and what potential may arise out of it. Authors complex of censorship issues concerning the exercise of political power
will include: Eliot, Huidobro, Dos Passos, Woolf, Galvão, Arlt and Faulkner. in administering human life and the body, literature and drama as political
COLT 1310P. Silk Road Fictions (EAST 1310). representation, and the hermeneutics of censorship.
Interested students must register for EAST 1310. COLT 1410D. Dramatic Literature and Theoretical Practice in
COLT 1310R. From "Wild Beast" to "True Born Prince": Native Eighteenth-Century England.
Resistance in Native and Anglo-American Literature. An introduction to the dramatic literature of 18th-century England in
How does Wampanoag war leader, Metacom, go from “a Salvage and the context of contemporary theatrical conventions and innovations.
a wild Beast” in 1677 to a “true born prince” in 1814? Coaxing Anglo- Plays read alongside treatises on acting techniques, stage design, and
America’s violent Native history into a positive national epic has made contemporary theatrical pamphlet-debates. The sociopolitical contexts of
this collective amnesia an American commonplace. In this course, we first the London patent theaters and the coexistent "illegitimate" entertainments
concentrate on contemporary accounts of three early conflicts between are explored, as well as the influential effects of Continental theatrical
Native peoples and settlers: the second Anglo-Powhatan War (1622-’32), theory and innovation.
“King Philip’s War” (1675-’76), and Tecumseh’s War (1810-’13). The COLT 1410E. Japanese Theatre: from Dengaku to De Sade.
second half of the course will turn to the Removal Era, a high point in Surveys traditional Japanese theatre from the lofty medieval Nō drama
American literature’s obsession with the “fate” of indigenous peoples. This to the more popular genres of Jōruri (puppet theatre) and Kabuki in the
is also the time of James Fenimore Cooper’s and Washington Irving’s Edo period (1600-1868). Through playscripts, related secondary criticism,
contributions to that narrative, both of whom we will read. Accompanying videotapes, and films, we will examine the function of spectacle and
them, however, will be Native retellings of those same conflicts (e.g. theatre, the problem of representation or mimesis, the notion of audience,
William Apess, George Stiggins, E. Pauline Johnson, and others’). and the relation of text to performance. Concludes with more recent
COLT 1310S. The Jewelers of the Ummah: The Jewish Muslim World examples of Japanese drama and performance.
is Not History (HMAN 1975U). COLT 1410F. Medieval Drama.
Interested students must register for HMAN 1975U. How drama developed in northwestern Europe between the tenth and
COLT 1310U. History of Romance Languages (FREN 1020B).. early sixteenth century-from liturgical tropes and miracle plays to mystery
Interested students must register for FREN 1020B. cycles and morality plays, from popular feasts and minstrel performances
Fall COLT1310U S01 18960 Arranged ’To Be Arranged' to fool's plays, farces, and other secular comedies. Emphasis on the
cultural context and social functions of dramatic games and performances
COLT 1310V. Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World. in premodern Europe.
We will study the Jewish Muslim world and the role of different imperial
and colonial technologies (e.g., granting and denying citizenship, art, the COLT 1410K. European Early Modern Drama.
museum, the archive) which brought it to its end, thus normalizing the An introduction to early modern drama in the French, Italian, Spanish,
dissociation of Jews from Muslims. We will ask what remains when a world and English traditions. The goal is to explore a wide range of imaginative
is being destroyed, what continues to be transmitted and what can still be impulses in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Readings will include
reclaimed. Students will be invited to experiment with different modes of plays by Corneille, Racine, Calderón, Lope de Vega, Shakespeare,
accounting for imperial destruction, countering the amnesia it produces, Machiavelli, and Molière.
and reclaiming corporeal memory through objects and craft making. The COLT 1410L. Philosophy and Tragedy.
Maghreb will be our point of departure, but students are invited to explore Explores the intersection of philosophy and tragedy in western literature.
other imperial geographies in their presentations. The seminar draws on Readings may include Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Hegel,
Azoulay’s new book The Jewelers of the Ummah and engages with texts and Nietzsche.
by Franz Fanon, Hannah Arendt, Sylvia Wynter etc.

Comparative Literature 13
14 Comparative Literature

COLT 1410M. Shakespeare and Philosophy. COLT 1411D. Antigones.

Explores the relationship between Shakespeare and philosophy. Readings As one of the most revised and interpreted works around the globe,
include philosophers who have written about Shakespeare (Hegel, Sophocles’ Antigone invites a comparison of adaptations across cultural
Nietzsche, Cavell, and others), as well as philosophers who may illuminate contexts. This course examines how the play’s exploration of citizenship,
interpretive problems in Shakespeare (Plato, Seneca, Spinoza, and law, gender, family, and resistance to authority has shaped philosophical
others). conceptions of tragedy and speaks to contemporary political issues. We
will consider reimaginings of Antigone under apartheid laws in South
COLT 1410N. Found in Translation: The Adaptation of Literature to
Africa, the Mexican drug war, and in the age of ISIS. The class is designed
Film in Japan.
as a workshop where students will study versions of Antigone (theoretical
Contrasting the demands of the text versus the screen, we will read eight
texts, dramatic literature, poetry, visual art) and engage in adaptation,
to ten works of modern Japanese literature and view the film versions
translation, and performance.
of each in order to discuss the problem of translation from one medium
to another. Possible works for inclusion are Rashomon, Harp of Burma, COLT 1411E. Race and Gender in Early Modern Theater.
Woman in the Dunes, and The Makioka Sisters. Finally, we will consider In this course, we will cover a selection of Early Modern tragedies
manga (the graphic novel) and its adaptation into anime. from various literary traditions (English, French, Italian, Spanish), to
critically discuss and analyze dramatic representations of gender and
COLT 1410O. Shakespeare and.
race as portrayed on the Early Modern stage. Considering moments of
Canon formation and disciplinary divisions have deformed the way in
renegotiation, critique, and resistance towards dominant hierarchies, we
which we read Shakespeare. Frequently presented as a post-romantic
will give especial attention to marginalized characters, and/or to characters
singular "author," cut off from the sources, texts and genres on which he
who are explicitly gendered or racialized in the plays in which they appear.
drew and the collaborators with whom he worked, Shakespeare looks,
We will accompany our reading of primary-source texts with selections
reads and performs differently in relation to the rich contexts in which the
from contemporary critical theory on gender and race, which will provide
plays were produced and through which they are produced today. We
an important springboard for intersectional analysis.
will read plays and other materials with attention to formal and historical
questions including genre, the Shakespearean text, gender, sexuality, COLT 1420A. The Tale of Genji and its Legacy.
status, degree, and nation. The Tale of Genji (circa 1000 CE), authored by Murasaki Shikibu, a
woman of the Heian court, has been canonized over the centuries as the
COLT 1410P. Shakespeare.
greatest work of Japanese literature. No work in the Japanese tradition
We will read a number of Shakespeare's plays from The Comedy of
has exerted as much literary influence as this mammoth work of prose
Errors to The Winter's Tale in relation to the sources, analogues, and
fiction detailing the private lives of Genji, the brilliant son of the emperor,
genres (classical, continental and English) on which he drew. We will
those with whom he consorts, and his descendents. We will read Genji in
consider both formal and historical questions. Issues to be addressed
its entirety, along with antecedent works, other texts of the period, works
include genre, the Shakespearean text, gender, sexuality, status, degree,
influenced by Murasaki's opus, other historical materials, and secondary
and nation. Some attention to what has come to be called "global"
commentary. There are no prerequisites for this course and it is open to all
Shakespeare. Written work to include a mid-term and two papers.
undergraduates.
COLT 1410S. Classical Tragedy.
COLT 1420B. A Mirror for the Romantic: The Tale of Genji and The
This course will read the great Greek tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Story of the Stone.
and Euripides, and some Senecan tragedy. We will then read Renaissance
In East Asian Buddhist culture, the mirror is a symbol of the mind in both
and later tragedies that use the classical world as a setting, such as
its intellectual and emotional aspects. These masterworks detail the lives
Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and tragedies that rewrite classical
and loves of Prince Genji, cynosure of the medieval Japanese court, and
themes, including O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra.
Jia Baoyu, the last hope of an influential Chinese clan during the reign of
COLT 1410T. Tragedy from Sophocles to The Wire. Manchus. We examine both works as well as the sources of Genji and
Explores tragedy from Athens to Baltimore. Readings will include literary aesthetics of the Tang dynasty.
Sophocles, Shakespeare, Hegel, Chekhov, Jia Zhangke, Chan-Wook
COLT 1420E. The Nineteenth-Century Novel (ENGL 1561I).
Park, Marx, Trotsky, and the deindustrialized American city. Open to
Interested students must register for ENGL 1561I.
juniors and seniors. Instructor permission required.
COLT 1420F. Fantastic and Existentialist Literatures of Argentina,
COLT 1410U. Shakespeare in Perspective.
Uruguay and Brazil.
We study Shakespeare together with selections from other writers or
Jorge Luis Borges proclaimed that South American writers can "wield all
thinkers, including those who have written about Shakespeare (e.g.
themes" without superstition, with irreverence. This course examines the
Nietzsche, Emerson, Coleridge), and those who can illuminate interpretive
ways in which 20th century writers from Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil
problems in Shakespeare (e.g. Plato, Melville).
appropriated European fantastic and existentialist fictions, taking them in
COLT 1410V. Russian Theatre and Drama (TAPS 1430). new directions. Readings, in English or original languages, include Borges,
Interested students must register for TAPS 1430. Cortázar, Onetti, Lispector. Prerequisite: previous college literature
COLT 1410Y. Shakespeare and Embodiment (ENGL 1360Z). course(s).
Interested students must register for ENGL 1360Z. COLT 1420G. Fictions of the Caribbean.
COLT 1411B. Theater and Revolution. The Caribbean has inspired conflicting cultural and political claims, and
This class explores how theater and dramatic literature question and a wealth of visual images. We will rethink the formation, representation
shape our understanding of “revolution” as a radical turn, incisive rupture, and self-presentation of the Caribbean countries, steering our explorations
and profound shift in the way we perceive and organize our social and through postcolonial and postmodern theory to questions of appropriation,
cultural life. How does drama accompany revolutionary movements, and language and identity. Readings from Columbus and Shakespeare to
how do revolutions compel political theater to transform itself? Readings Danticat, Santos Febres and Kincaid; essays by Glissant, James Benítez
include Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, Büchner’s Rojo and others.
Danton’s Death, Brecht’s Life of Galileo, and Parks’s The America Play. COLT 1420K. Masterworks of Chinese Fiction.
We will analyze plays and performances, write our own dramatic scenes, Focuses on three acknowledged classics of Chinese fiction-Three
and discuss key concepts of theater theory and practice. Kingdoms, The Journey to the West, and The Dream of the Red Chamber-
works which demonstrate the range of the genre as they represent
historical, fantastical, and sociopsychological subjects. Topics include the
role of fiction in Chinese society, the masterworks as mirrors of Chinese
culture from the 14th through 18th centuries, and the comparative theory
of the novel.

14 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 15

COLT 1420L. Modern Japanese Fiction. COLT 1420Y. Gigantic Fictions.

Narrative fiction from the Meiji Period (1868-1912) to the present in the Terms such as ‘epic,’ ‘mammoth,’ ‘gigantic,’ and even ‘loose, baggy
context of modern Japanese cultural and intellectual history. In addition monsters’ have been coined to describe examples of literary discourse
to more canonical writers such as Natsume Sōseki and Mori ōgai, that inordinately exceed the normative boundaries of fiction. How are
examines the legacy of women writers such as Higuchi Ichiyō and Enchi we to understand these narratives? What is the relation between literary
Fumiko; proletariat writers such as Hayama Yoshiki, Kobayashi Takiji, and gigantism and mimesis? How do 'gigantic fictions' threaten to break their
Hayashi Fumiko; and more contemporary mass-audience writers such as literary bounds? What holds these mammoth narratives together? What
Yoshimoto Banana and Yamada Eimi. impels authors to elect such a grand scope for literary representation? We
explore these questions and others through close reading of several works
COLT 1420N. Postcolonial Faulkner.
deemed to be among the most gargantuan from authors such as Rabelais,
How is it that Faulkner became one of the most influential North American
Murasaki Shikibu, Tolstoy and Joyce.
authors in the Third World? To answer this, we read Faulkner's "The
Bear" against two of his citational novels, Absalom, Absalom! and The COLT 1421F. Esthers of the Diaspora: Female Jewish Voices from
Sound and the Fury. We then turn toward a number of Faulknerian novels Latin America (POBS 1500H).
from the Arab world and Latin America. We discuss theoretical texts that Interested students must register for POBS 1500H.
describe the legacies of various colonialisms. COLT 1421G. Dickens and Others (ENGL 1511G).
COLT 1420O. Proust, Joyce and Faulkner. Interested students must register for ENGL 1511G.
A reading of three major Modernist authors, with a focus on the following COLT 1421I. The Paternalistic Thriller and Other Studies in Colonial
issues: role of the artist, representation of consciousness, weight of the Fiction.
past. Texts include substantial portions of Proust's Recherche, Joyce's The impact of colonialism on European fiction from the rise of empire to its
Portrait and Ulysses, Faulkner's Sound and the Fury, Light in August decline and fall, focusing on authors who wrote from direct contact with the
and Absalom, Absalom! Prior background in these authors desirable, peoples of Africa and Asia, such as Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, T.
especially Ulysses. E. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and Isak Dinesen. Topics will include romantic
COLT 1420Q. The Bildungsroman. images of conquest, imperial ideology in literature, differing attitudes
Readings of novels in the Bildungsroman tradition and the theoretical towards acculturation, and the changing symbolism of exotic settings.
questions of the genre: the historicity and constitution of the self; problems COLT 1421K. Faulkner (ENGL 1710G).
of the representation of a life; the category of the unity of a life as a Interested students must register for ENGL 1710G.
factor of identity; notions of progress, development and completion.
Considerations of the successes and failures of this model. Readings to COLT 1421L. "Terrible Beauty": Literature and the Terrorist Imaginary
be selected from Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Sterne, Goethe, Novalis, (ENGL 1760I).
Flaubert, Musil, Kerouac. Interested students must register for ENGL 1760I.
COLT 1420S. The Captivity Narrative. COLT 1421M. Conrad and Naipaul: The Supremacy of the Visible?
Because the captivity narrative implies both a feminized subject and (ENGL 1761T).
a writing subject, it provides a link among political, social, and literary Interested students must register for ENGL 1761T.
phenomena common to all modern Western cultures. Examines various COLT 1421N. Kafka's Writing (GRMN 1340M).
novels consumed by members of such cultures (including gothic Interested students must register for GRMN 1340M.
romances, Bildungs romanen, boys books, girls books, ethnographic
journeys, and prison diaries) as versions of the captivity narrative. COLT 1421O. W. G. Sebald and Some Interlocutors (ENGL 1761Q).
Interested students must register for ENGL 1761Q.
COLT 1420T. The Fiction of Relationship.
Explores the manifold ways in which narrative literature sheds light on COLT 1421Q. Word and Image: Ekphrasis, the Iconic Narrative, and
the relationships that we have in life, both knowingly and unknowingly. the Graphic Novel.
The novel form, with its possibilities of multiple voices and perspectives, An examination of the tradition of illustrated narratives from the pre-
captures the interplay between self and other that marks all lives. modern to the modern periods: the ancient Indian epic the Ramayana,
Authors include Laclos, Melville, Brontë, Kafka, Woolf, Faulkner, Borges, the early eleventh-century Japanese Genji Monogatari, the medieval
Burroughs, Vesaas, Morrison, and Coetzee. English Canterbury Tales, the late eighteenth century Marriage of Heaven
and Hell, as well as the contemporary graphic novel Persepolis and
COLT 1420U. The South: Literatures of the U.S. South and South examples of Japanese manga. Discussion will focus on the nature of
America. iconography and symbolism; the historical privileging of text over image;
For Jorge Luis Borges, in his story of the same title, the South is a spectral the significance of parallel visual and verbal representation and its
region, hovering between imagination and reality. The literatures of the implications for culturally-specific theories of reading. Instructor permission
U.S. South and South America enact his notion of the South. We examine required.
the remarkable similarities between the two literatures-similarities that
result from literary influence and from social, cultural, and historical COLT 1421R. The European Novel from Richardson to Goethe.
circumstances. Prerequisites: previous upper-level literature course(s), This course studies the rise of the novel in eighteenth-century England,
relevant to your studies at Brown. Instructor permission is required and will France, and Germany, focusing on the development of epistolary fiction,
be given after second class. but with side-glances at the picaresque and sentimental tradition. Texts
to be read include Richardson's Pamela, Fielding's Shamela and Joseph
COLT 1420V. Visionary Fictions. Andrews, Rousseau's Julie, Laclos's Les liaisons dangereuses, perhaps
Visionary and apocalyptic writing, subversive of modes of perception and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie, perhaps Sade's Justine, and
understanding as well as of political doctrines and systems, from Blake definitely Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther.
and Novalis to mid-nineteenth century French writers (Nerval, Rimbaud,
Lautréamont), Surrealism and William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. COLT 1421S. The Poetics of Confession (ENGL 1561J).
Interested students must register for ENGL 1561J.
COLT 1420X. The European Novel From Goethe to Proust.
Readings of major European novels of the 19th century as literary
reflections on philosophical questions such as aesthetic and ethical
judgment, subjectivity, mimesis, memory and the novel itself as a genre.
Authors include Goethe, Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert and Proust.
Selections from Kant, Hegel, Marx, Lukács and Benjamin.

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COLT 1421T. Mediterranean Fictions: On Debts, Crises, and the Ends COLT 1422E. The 19th-Century Novel: Transatlantic Perspectives.
of Europe. What happened when the novel crossed the Atlantic? After its rise in
Sun-drenched, seductive, and timeless, the Mediterranean is an appealing Europe in the mid 18th century, the novel quickly spread and became
location from which to ponder Europe’s debt to this cradle of western a dominant literary genre both in the U.S. and in Latin America. In this
civilization. Recently, the region’s economic debt crisis has crystallized course we will read key 19th-century novels in the European tradition; we
thoughts that, beginning here, a peaceful, unified Europe will come will then discuss how this (by no means homogenous) European genre
undone or be rehabilitated. The word ‘crisis’ itself hinges on a making was assimilated and modified across the Atlantic. What did writers in Brazil
a crucial decision, often in marking the turning point of a disease. This and in the U.S. do with the genre, and how did they transform it according
course examines representations of this moment through literature and to national specificities? We will focus on English, French, American, and
film—but also in history, anthropology, journalism, and art—and in the Brazilian novels.
context of other pivotal twentieth-century Mediterranean texts that marked, COLT 1422F. Short Forms: Major Works in a Minor Key (HISP 1330Q).
and anticipated, seismic shifts on the continent. Interested students must register for HISP 1330Q.
COLT 1421U. Words Like Daggers: The Epistolary Novel. COLT 1422H. Mediterranean Fictions: On Debts, Crises, and the Ends
Letters as novels, novels in letters: this course traces the development of
of Europe (MGRK 1230).
the epistolary novel, as it was cultivated in Europe from the seventeenth to Interested students must register for MGRK 1230.
the twentieth centuries. Through focused discussions of seminal, as much
as fascinating, specimens of the genre, we will study the major impact that COLT 1422L. The Modernist Novel: Alienation and Narration.
epistolary fiction had on the stylistic and conceptual evolution of the novel This course will examine how the modernist novel is not only about
in general, also exploring its interactions with a range of established or alienation—estrangement from others, the meaninglessness of existence,
shifting social structures, gender roles, discursive practices, and modes of the divorce of private self from public life—but also incorporates alienation
consciousness. Authors include Montesquieu, Laclos, Goethe, Hölderlin, into its narrative structures. Through the close analysis of novels by
Stoker, Foscolo, Tabucchi, Alexandrou, and Galanaki. European and Latin American authors (Kafka, Camus, Woolf, Onetti, Rulfo
and Di Benedetto), we will consider alienation from a variety of angles: as
COLT 1421V. Modernisms North and South: Ulysses in Dublin, Paris, a formal problem for narrative; as an existential situation; an experience
and Buenos Aires. of history and the past; and as a condition related to the uneven global
James Joyce’s Ulysses (Ireland, 1922), André Breton’s Nadja (Paris, economy.
1928), and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch (Argentina, 1963): key texts of
modernism, the avant-garde, and post-modernism, from different moments COLT 1422M. Reading the Short Story.
and outpost of literary modernity, but in intimate conversation with one This course invites students to explore the pleasurable challenges of
another about the place of the human in art, and of art in politics. Join close reading within the context of a compressed form, the modern short
Stephen Dedalus, Leopold and Molly Bloom, Nadja, Horacio Oliveira, story. Select works from the nineteenth century on wards—many of them
and a cast of minor characters on a journey through the hearts, minds, masterpieces, some hidden gems from around the world—will help us
memories, and nervous systems of various modern metropoles. question what we think they mean and how we know this. We will develop
Fall COLT1421V S01 18355 MWF 11:00-11:50(16) (M. Clayton) practices and techniques for articulating such quandaries even as we
observe how sociocultural themes, theories of interpretation, and literary
COLT 1421W. Blast from the Past: The Historical Novel. movements intertwine with expressions of the self and the politics of
Focuses on a popular literary genre known as the historical novel. identity.
We will discuss its defining characteristics, cultural meanings, and No prerequisites. Open to all undergraduates.
basic differences from other types of fiction. We will also explore larger Fall COLT1422MS01 18506 MWF 1:00-1:50(08) (V. Calotychos)
theoretical issues that are intricately related to the development and
scope of the genre: the representation of the past and its relationship COLT 1422N. Peasant-Boom-Slum: The Latin American Novel.
to the present; the creative integration of the gaps between factual Despite being associated with peasants and agricultural goods,
history and lived experience; and finally the complex interaction between Latin America has become the most urbanized region in the world.
authenticity and fictionality, exemplarity and specificity, temporality and In this course, we will analyze novels that attempt to make sense of
detachment. Authors include Flaubert, Yourcenar, Kadare, Pamuk, Latin American society in relation to this chaotic and rapid historical
Calvino, Lampedusa, Roidis, and Galanaki. transformation. Beginning with nineteenth-century writers who called on
civilization to conquer the barbaric countryside, we move to the so-called
COLT 1421X. Fairy Tales and Culture (FREN 1330A). “Boom” novels of the twentieth century that ambiguously questioned the
Interested students must register for FREN 1330A. authoritarian and destructive impulses of this modernizing project, and
COLT 1422A. The Twilight Zone: Classics of Horror Fiction. conclude with contemporary authors who reflect on the utter collapse
This course discusses a number of seminal works – from Gothic novels of modernization. In these novels, we will see that the topic of the city
to ghost stories and vampire epics – that exploit the oldest and strongest and the countryside becomes a powerful framework for imagining and
emotion of mankind: fear. Why are authors and readers fanatically drawn thinking through issues of indigeneity, gender, industrialization, memory
to something as disturbing as horror, supernatural or not? How do the and dictatorship. Authors: Borges, Arlt, Galvão, Rulfo, Fuentes, Vargas
gruesome or the macabre become sources of intellectual excitement and Llosa, Arguedas, Lispector, Bolaño and Aira.
aesthetic gratification? How can texts whose intended effect is to shock COLT 1430A. Ancient Greek Myth in Modern Poetry.
and distress compel us to confront suppressed instincts, challenge deep- Various responses to ancient Greek myths by poets in the Western
rooted certainties, or reflect on things and ideas that we generally prefer to tradition, especially modern Greek poets. Considers how the classical
ignore? Are you brave enough to find out? version of myths, such as those of Helen, Oedipus, Orpheus, Persephon,
COLT 1422B. Family Fictions in the Enlightenment. Penelope, and Ulysses, are approached, rewritten, or subverted in poetry
This course will study the changing representation of the family in the since 1800. Emphasizes the challenges posed by the past, issues of
literature, art and culture of Enlightenment Europe. We will analyze the cultural and political context, and on questions of gender. Readings in
critique of traditional models of the family and the construction of an English.
ideal of domesticity based on new concepts of childhood, education
and marriage. We will read stories of “domestic misfortunes” as well as
proposals for alternative solutions to “ill husbandry.” Readings will include
novels, plays, theoretical texts and visual documents (paintings and
caricatures).
COLT 1422D. Short Forms: Major Works in a Minor Key (HISP 1330Q).
Interested students must register for HISP 1330Q.

16 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 17

COLT 1430B. Art and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern COLT 1430N. The Albatross and the Nightingale: Nineteenth-Century
Literature. Poetry.
In this course we will cover a selection of Classical, Medieval and Early Readings in French, German, British and American poetry of the
Modern works from various linguistic traditions (English, French, Italian, nineteenth century. Texts selected from: Hölderlin, Mörike, Heine, Hugo,
Portuguese, and Spanish), which feature literary representations of art, Nerval, Baudelaire, Keats, Hardy, Dickinson, Poe and others. Focus on
especially via scenes that are ekphrastic in nature (the description of close reading, and rhetorical and formal elements of poetry. Frequent
Achilles’s shield in Homer’s Iliad, for instance), and via textual moments writing assignments.
that use exemplary ekphrastic scenes as a point of departure for larger COLT 1430O. The Poetry of Childhood.
commentaries on: the nature of art, the role of the artist, and the reception Selected readings from among Rousseau, Blake, Hölderlin, Wordsworth,
of works of art along with their attendant sociocultural impact. Taking Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Freud, Yeats, Char.
moments of renegotiation, critique, and resistance towards dominant
hierarchies as a helpful framework, along with texts that explicitly situate COLT 1430Q. Poetry and the Sublime (GRMN 1440C).
themselves against the exemplary model from which they are drawing, Interested students must register for GRMN 1440C.
we will give special attention to race and gender by examining the artistic COLT 1430S. Latin American Death Trip (LITR 1230K).
representation of marginalized bodies that are explicitly gendered or Interested students must register for LITR 1230K.
racialized in the literary texts in which they appear. We will also look at
race and gender in select works from Medieval and Early Modern artists. COLT 1430T. Leaves of Words: Japanese Poetry and Poetics.
A historical study of various poetic forms of Japanese poetry (waka) from
COLT 1430C. Classical Japanese Poetry. the 8th-century anthology, the Man'yoshu, to the advent of modern verse,
A historical study of various poetic forms of waka or Japanese poetry including jiyushi or free verse, in the latter part of the 19th century into the
from the 8th-century anthology, the Man'yōshū, to the advent of modern 20th century. Focusses on the relationship of poetry to society, religion, the
verse, including jiyūshi or free verse, in the latter part of the 19th century. political implications of waka, and the dominant aesthetic modes governing
Focuses on the relationship of poetry to religion, the political implications poetic conventions in different periods.
of waka, and the dominant aesthetic governing poetic conventions in
different periods. COLT 1430U. Measures of Poetry: A Workshop.
Rhythm, intonation and their written forms measure poetic matter. This
COLT 1430D. Critical Approaches to Chinese Poetry. workshop introduces prosody through exercises in theory and practice:
Examination of works of Chinese poetry of several forms and periods the line; metrical and stanzaic form; rhyme; music and performance; free
in the context of Chinese poetic criticism. Knowledge of Chinese not verse; language writing; and the task of translation (form). Even monkeys,
required, but provisions for working with original texts will be made for Darwin wrote, express strong feelings in different tones. Enrollment limited
students of Chinese language. to 20.
COLT 1430H. Poetry, Art, and Beauty. COLT 1431B. Modern Arabic Poetry.
What does it mean to be beautiful in classical and European literature An advanced course with readings in modernist Arabic poetry,
and the arts? How do poems and works of visual art embody beauty? beginning with the so-called neo-classical poets and proceeding through
How is the idea of beauty defined by thinkers from Plato to Benjamin and Romanticism and Modernism, from Egypt to Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq,
Danto? Works include Sappho, Plato, Aristotle, Catullus, Horace, Petrarch, and beyond. We will examine such recurring themes as love, loss, and
Kant, Wordsworth, Baudelaire, Rilke, Benjamin, Stevens. Works of art longing; war, exile, and homeland; cultural heritage (turath) and creative
considered range from the Lascaux caves through renaissance classical innovation (ibda‘); gender and genre. All readings in Arabic; at least three
painters like Giotto and Raphael to contemporary installations. years Arabic language study (or equivalent) required for enrollment.
COLT 1430I. Poetry of Europe: Montale, Celan, Hill. COLT 1431C. Poets, Poetry, and Politics.
The fifty years between the Second World War and the formation of the The award of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan ignited a
European Union was a period in which the meaning of "Europe" was lively debate about who is, and who is not, a poet. Historically, who were
placed under great strain. The class will examine the strains and debates deemed poets, what was their function? What do their poems do and
about Europe within the lyric poetry of several literary traditions. It will take how do they work? Do they foment revolution or “make nothing happen,”
the form of close historical, formal, and critical readings of three books of as Auden once wrote? How does the poet aspire to a unique, individual
poems in their entirety: Montale's The Storm and Others (1956), Celan's voice even as he or she may (be seen to) best represent a constituency?
No-One's Rose (1963), and Hill's Canaan (1997). Enrollment limited to 25. This course relates the poetic act to political action and interrogates the
Spr COLT1430I S01 26354 Th 4:00-6:30(17) (K. Haynes) commonly aired contention that politics makes for bad poetry.
COLT 1430J. Readings in Poetry and Poetics. COLT 1431D. Reading Modernist Poetry.
Concentrated readings of Hölderlin, Shelley, Baudelaire, and Yeats in The period between 1880 and 1950, generally known as the age of
conjunction with theoretical texts by Heidegger, Derrida, De Man, and Modernism, saw profound changes at every level of Western society,
Benjamin. Texts include poetry, essays, novels, and dramas of the poets in including politics, war, religion, and art. In this course, we will examine
a critical and philosophical context. Focuses on the relationship between how various poets in Europe and beyond responded to and helped
figurative and expository language, the limits of commentary, and the shape these changes through their art. Emphasis will be on reading for
concept of criticism as repetition and translation. French or German form as well as theme and socio-historical context, and on poetry as
required. Frequent writing and oral presentations. performance. Authors may include Yeats, H.D., Hughes, Rilke, Lasker-
COLT 1430K. The Classical Tradition in English Poetry. Schüler, Celan, Apollinaire, Césaire, Montale, Ungaretti, Blok, Akhmatova,
We will read a number of famous short poems from antiquity in conjunction Lorca, and Neruda. Knowledge of at least one non-English language
with the major English writers who later translated, imitated, and reworked highly recommended.
them. We will pay special attention to the question of creative innovation. COLT 1431E. Loss in Modern Arabic Literature.
We will read Horace, Theocritus, Virgil, Dryden, Pope, Tennyson, and This course examines the literary expression of and response to various
others. forms of loss, including military defeat, diaspora, and prison confinement
COLT 1430L. Voices of Romanticism. in Arabic poems, short stories, and novellas from the 20th century through
Readings of lyric poetry in the European Romantic tradition. Focus the post-Arab Spring. We explore how texts reimagine social and political
on problems of lyric subjectivity and representation, and the rhetoric geographies through diverse poetic and narrative techniques to enrich our
of "voice." Emphasis on formal features of poetry. The course will be understanding of the region and of central debates in its literary tradition.
based on close reading and frequent writing assignments. Readings from Though the topics may seem quite grim, we will find that many of the
Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Goethe, Novalis, Hugo, Nerval, Lamartine, readings render forms of loss into aesthetics of beauty or empowerment.
Baudelaire and others. Knowledge of French or German required, or by No knowledge of Arabic necessary.
permission.

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COLT 1431F. Reading Modernist Poetry. COLT 1440P. Nationalism and Transnationalism in Film and Fiction.
The period between 1880 and 1950, generally known as the age of Reports of the demise of nationalism always seem greatly exaggerated.
Modernism, saw profound changes at every level of Western society, How are notions of transnationalism dependent on rewriting the nation?
including politics, war, religion, and art. In this course, we will examine This course revisits films of world cinema acclaimed for their national
how various poets in Europe and beyond responded to and helped cachet from a transnational perspective and in dialogue with their
shape these changes through their art. Emphasis will be on reading for literary intertexts. We will study these films’ fictional narration, cinematic
form as well as theme and socio-historical context, and on poetry as articulation, and critical reception and consider how they signify in
performance. Authors may include Yeats, H.D., Hughes, Rilke, Lasker- multinational networks of funding, distribution, production, conception, and
Schüler, Celan, Apollinaire, Césaire, Montale, Ungaretti, Blok, Akhmatova, critical reception. Students will analyze the political, ethical, and artistic
Lorca, and Neruda. Knowledge of at least one non-English language stakes of confronting difference as both a located and universal stance or
highly recommended. commodity. Films and texts chosen from across the globe.
COLT 1431H. Women Writing Epic (CLAS 1930F). COLT 1440Q. Stranger Things: The German Novella (GRMN 1440X).
Interested students must register for CLAS 1930F. Interested students must register for GRMN 1440X.
COLT 1431I. Ovid's Metamorphoses (CLAS 1120X).. COLT 1440S. Images d’une guerre sans nom: the Algerian War in
Interested students must register for CLAS 1120X. Literature and Film (FREN 1410R).
Interested students must register for FREN 1410R.
COLT 1431J. Anti Poetry.
Hating on poetry is a time-honored tradition. From Plato to the Dadaists, COLT 1440T. Cinema's Bodies.
thinkers and writers across the world have questioned the reigning The course explores the cinematic construction of bodies, female, male,
poetics, or the value of poetry altogether. This course examines a range animal and others. They are not standing alone as they are framed, cut,
of theoretical arguments about the value and nature of poetry from the exposed, veiled, enlarged, distorted and gendered. The body is screened
premodern period to the present. At the same time, we will closely read at the screen and composed into an imaginary image of beauty, death,
materials from literary projects that have explored the permissible limits sex, work. Cinematic devices like close-up, camera angle, light etc.
of the poetic, defined themselves against poetry, or have been accused transform bodies into the body of the film and its specific style, from which
of failing to meet the standards of poetry. Focusing on case studies like they can't be subtracted. This leads to the question of the spectator’s body
the Latin American anti-poetry movement, the Arabic prose poem and the as screen for the filmic body and the many theoretical explorations to the
work of the LANGUAGE poets, we will familiarize ourselves with debates embodied visions cinema entails and stimulates.
in lyric theory and a variety of poetic traditions. COLT 1440U. The Listener (Literature, Theory, Film).
Fall COLT1431J S01 18843 Th 4:00-6:30(04) (M. Pabon)
Listening is not only the supposedly peaceful, welcoming activity that
COLT 1440B. Killer Love: Passion and Crime in Fiction and Film. verges on mere receptive passivity. Listening or not listening also has
Discusses textual and cinematic representations of criminal passion and to do with the exercise of power and this is the reason why we have a
its ambiguous relationship to religious, moral, and social norms. We will responsibility as listeners. In order to explore what could be described
focus on extreme forms of intimacy both as a thematic choice of cultural as the politics of listening, we will follow multiple paths that will lead us
production and as a symbolic medium of communication. Why is it that art from the strategies of listening in concert venues to the medical practice
so often explores unsanctioned emotions and deviant behaviors? What of auscultation and the generalization of surveillance techniques. Our
is at stake when narratives capitalize on violent manifestations of desire? seminar will interweave readings in literature or theory (Kafka, Nietzsche,
In what ways is the semantics of excessive love related to conceptions of Calvino, Foucault, Chekhov, Freud, Deleuze. . .) and screenings of
subjectivity, sociability, and sexuality? What role does it play in the creative selected filmic scenes.
process itself? Spr COLT1440U S01 26355 Th 4:00-6:30(17) (P. Szendy)
COLT 1440F. 1948 Photo Album: From Palestine To Israel. COLT 1440X. Shéhérazades : Depicting the "Orientale" in Modern
Why do we name the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" as we do? The purpose French Culture.
of this class is to use photographs – alongside historical and literary Centered around the storied figure of Shéhérazade, this course explores
documents--to question the framework of a "national conflict" and study literary and visual representations of “oriental” women in France from the
its emergence as a given, unquestioned and axiomatic scheme for 18th century to the contemporary period. Structured in a chronological
any historical narrative of that period. Reading archival material and and thematic manner, the course confronts students with highly influential
post-colonial and photography theories, each week we shall study one orientalist depictions of women (including Voltaire, Loti, and Delacroix),
photograph taken in 1948, reconstructing the photography event as well as as well as postcolonial and feminist responses to orientalism. Primary
its myriad relations among the protagonists involved and its after life as an sources will be supplemented with theoretical readings from Edward Said,
archived image, to include photographed persons, photographers, editors, Fatima Mernissi and Joan Scott among others, in order to question the
journalists, politicians, and more. evolution and relevance of “orientalism” in France today and articulate the
enduringly complex relation between imperialism and gender.
COLT 1440H. The Literature and Cinema of Global Organized Crime
(SLAV 1500). COLT 1440Z. Poets on Poetry.
Interested students must register for SLAV 1500. How do poets think about poetry? How might their ideas differ from those
of professional theorists and critics? In this course we will look at the
COLT 1440K. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Contested Narratives (UNIV
variety of ways in which poets throughout history have written about their
1001).
craft, from essays and letters, to poems, translations, and writing guides.
Interested students must register for UNIV 1001.
In addition to discussing issues surrounding the theory, composition, and
COLT 1440M. Lyric Genre-Benders. ethics of poetry, students will write poems of their own, according to the
In this course, we will ask what constitutes poetic language and how to "rules" of famous poets like Edgar Allan Poe and John Keats. Authors may
identify the lyric as a genre. Are there discernible traits that lyric poems include Celan, Gander, Hayes, Horace, Lorde, Montale, Moore, Neruda,
share, or is poetry, like pornography, something we recognize only when Pound, Shelley, Swensen.
we see it? We will have a special focus on how genre is related to gender,
and consider the historical precedent of poetry calling readers to its
defense. Discussion will revolve around essays on lyric theory both classic
and contemporary, prose poems by Baudelaire and Davis, fragments by
Sappho, and finally, poems by Basho, Dickinson, Rankine, and more.

18 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 19

COLT 1441. Colonialisms on Trial. COLT 1610N. Ecological Thought.

Inspired by the movie Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako) in which This course will serve as an introduction to the new interdisciplinary field
capitalism is put on trial, this seminar asks: How can we draw from the of the environmental humanities. Discussing an exciting range of texts
study of and opposition to colonialism the law that one should enact and films—from Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, and Arundati Roy to Ridley
against it? In the name of what colonialism ought to be rejected? Can we Scott and Werner Herzog—we will investigate how literary and cinematic
imagine justice, freedom, or rights beyond Western liberal values? The works make ecological crisis perceptible. The following topics will be
seminar explores how colonialism has been put on trial by generations of central to our discussions: garbology (especially hoarding, collecting,
anti-colonial activists and thinkers such as Abd el-Kader or Fanon. Putting and the relation between trash and modern poetry); “slow violence”
colonialisms on trial means also putting history itself on trial alongside and postcolonial environmentalism; queer ecology; biopolitics; the
archives, reparations, museums, the subterranean, capital, religion, representation of non-human animals; the effects of 24/7 consumerism;
and the very notion of a court in its globalized liberal hegemonic form. and the political uses of ecological nostalgia, disgust, grief, and wonder.
A laboratory for collective investigation, this seminar will draw on our COLT 1610P. Holocaust Literature (JUDS 1820).
respective works. This dialogue will engage students in researching their Interested students must register for JUDS 1820.
own traces of colonialism’s violence.
COLT 1610Q. Gender Theory and Politics in France (FREN 1420C).
COLT 1610B. Irony. Interested students must register for FREN 1420C.
A study of the trope of irony and its evaluation, especially in the Romantic
tradition. Focuses on the epistemological implications of irony and the role COLT 1610R. Visions of Liberation: African Decolonization Now?.
it plays in contemporary criticism. Readings from Plato, Hegel, Schlegel, If, as many African thinkers contend, the acquisition of formal national
Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Lukács, Booth, White, De Man. independence did not signify liberation, it is necessary to imagine
decolonization now. In “Visions of Liberation,” we will examine ideas,
COLT 1610C. Japanese Aesthetics and Poetics. particularly those of Césaire and Fanon, that have shaped decolonial
Focuses on the historical development of aesthetic values and their thinking in Africa. What is the contemporary relevance of notions of
relation to social culture, religion, and national identity in Japan from the freedom imagined by thinkers of the early and mid-twentieth century? How
Nara period to the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the literary have postcolonial and post-apartheid writers conceived of freedom? What
arts. Readings from Fujiwara Teika, Zeami Motokiyo, Sen no Rikyū, does it mean to call Mali a “postcolony” or “neocolony,” or to state that
Okakura Tenshin, and others. A background in critical theory/philosophy South Africa is not postcolonial? Previous knowledge of the topic is not
and in East Asian studies helpful. required.
COLT 1610D. Theory of Lyric Poetry. COLT 1610U. Gender, Sexuality, and Culture in the Modern Middle
Through readings of recent critical discussions of the lyric genre, we will East.
explore general methodological problems of literary theory. Discussions An introduction to women’s and gender studies in the Middle East, with
include: the role of form, structure and tropes in analyzing poetry; a particular focus on Arabic literature and film. We will begin by laying
problems of subjectivity and voice; the relation between poetry and critical foundations for discussing gender issues in the Middle East, with
history; the function of reading: and the problematic "objectivity" of readings on Orientalism, the harem, and the veil. Other units include: pre-
criticism. Readings from Hölderlin, Shelley, Baudelaire, Yeats, Jakobson, modern female literary personae, gender and revolution, women writing
Benveniste, Riffaterre, Jauss, Johnson, De Man. war, feminism and class, colonialism and culture.
COLT 1610E. Aesthetics and Politics (ENGL 1900E). COLT 1610V. The Promise of Being: Heidegger for Beginners.
Interested students must register for ENGL 1900E. “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is,”
COLT 1610F. New Theories for a Baroque Stage (TAPS 1280N). Martin Heidegger writes, “that we are still not thinking.” Our undergraduate
Interested students must register for TAPS 1280N. seminar will study, slowly and carefully, some of Heidegger’s most
fascinating and challenging paths of thinking, especially as they relate
COLT 1610G. Mihail Bakhtin (RUSS 1895).
to questions of Being and our being-in-the-world. We will encounter
Interested students must register for RUSS 1895.
his unique engagements with art and literature, his critique of modern
COLT 1610I. Getting Emotional: Passionate Theories (ENGL 1560W). technology, his reflections on what it means to “dwell” somewhere, his
Interested students must register for ENGL 1560W. views on finitude and death, and his notion of being “on the way” toward
COLT 1610J. Holocaust Literature (JUDS 1820). language. No previous familiarity with Heidegger is assumed; curious
Interested students must register for JUDS 1820. students from diverse fields welcome.

COLT 1610K. Literature and Multilingualism (GRMN 1340N). COLT 1610W. Whites, White Jews and Us: Radical Black, Arab &
Interested students must register for GRMN 1340N. Jewish Thinkers.
Inspired by Houria Bouteldja’s book White, Jews and Us, which we will
COLT 1610L. What is Reading?. read in class, we will read authors who are engaged with generations of
The answers to this question will be read—deciphered—in the many (forced) displacement and concomitant fraught cartographies. The class
“reading scenes” found throughout the history of literature or philosophy. In will proceed along lines drawn by two questions: (a) what makes these
Plato’s Phaedrus, reading thus appears caught in a network of desire and texts radical and how does their radicalness opens paths of refusal, care
power: the dominant role—the erases (“lover”) who writes and teaches— and repair of and in shared worlds; (b) how do these authors engage
and the passive or submissive position—the eromenos (“beloved”) who with identities made and remade by displacement and catastrophe, and
reads and learns—are constantly permutated and destabilized. Hobbes’ how imagination, fabulation, remembrance and reclamation of never-
Leviathan, Melville’s Moby Dick and Billy Budd, Goethe’s and Valéry’s completely-lost worlds are mobilized to question these identities, borders
Faust will lead us to question what we do when we read and reflect upon and injustices they produce. We will read texts by Ella Shohat, Houria
what could be called a politics of reading. Bouteldja, Saidiya Hartman, Susan Slymovics, Anarkata, Aliyyah Abdur-
COLT 1610M. Twentieth-Century Russian Approaches to Literature: Rahman, Lital Levy and others.
Bakhtin and the Russian Formalists (SLAV 1890).
Interested students must register for SLAV 1890.

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20 Comparative Literature

COLT 1610Y. Of Friends and Enemies. COLT 1810E. Dwellers Amid the Clouds: the Literature of the Court.
“And so will believe in our stellar friendship, though we should have A survey of three court traditions-Heian Japan, medieval Iceland, and early
to be terrestrial enemies to one another,” Nietzsche says. How are modern England-in which the relationship between the literary genres
friendship and enmity construed in the Western traditions? What are the and the specific social context from which they emerge is highlighted in
philosophical and ethical implications of dividing one’s personal, cultural, the form of particular literary conventions. Topics include the question
and political world into friends and enemies? What is the elusive relation of patronage, the function of particular literature as shibboleth, the idea
between friendship and community, hospitality, war, and mourning? We of spectacle and play, the politics of literature, and the trope of irony as
will scrutinize the history and theory of friendship and enmity through courtly emblem.
close readings of writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Montaigne, Kant, COLT 1810F. Enlightenment and Anti-Enlightenment in Eighteenth-
Emerson, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Schmitt, Blanchot, Nancy, and Century Germany.
Derrida. Students from diverse fields welcome. Some of the most intractable questions of contemporary philosophy were
COLT 1710A. Introduction to Literary Translation. vigorously debated in eighteenth-century Germany. What are the limit of
This is a workshop course introducing the history and theory of literary reason? Does its supposed neutrality and universality mask its own set of
translation, with demonstrations and exercises translating poetry and prejudices? Are there any universally valid claims in truth or ethics? How,
prose. All languages welcome, but students must be proficient to the level why, should Christian, Jew, and Muslim tolerate their differences? We will
of reading literature in the original language. Foreign language through read literary and philosophical works by Hamann, Herder, Jacobi, Kant,
0600 or permission of the instructor. Lessing, and Mendelssohn.
COLT 1710B. Advanced Translation (LITR 1010F). COLT 1810G. Fiction and History.
Interested students must register for LITR 1010F. How the historical fiction that has flourished over the past four decades
challenges the notions of objectivity and totalization, while providing
COLT 1710C. Literary Translation Workshop.
alternative viewpoints for the reconstruction and reinterpretation of the
The primary focus of this course is the practice of literary translation
past. Authors considered include Grass, Doctorow, Delillo, García-
as an art. Using the workshop format, each student will complete a
Márquez, Allende, Danticat and Gordimer. Theoretical texts by White,
project by the end of the semester. Examples and theoretical texts will
LaCapra, Benjamin, Ricoeur, and Chartier. Films such as The Official
illuminate the historical, ethical, cultural, political, and aesthetic values that
Story and Europa, Europa will be viewed and incorporated into the
underlie every translation, keeping an eye towards opening up the field
discussions. Prerequisite: two previous courses in literature. Enrollment
beyond inherited practices to consider the contemporary implications of
limited to 19. Instructor permission required.
our choices, intentions, and purposes in translation. Open to all levels.
Spr COLT1810GS01 26356 M 3:00-5:30(13) (L. Valente)
Heritage speakers are welcome, collaboration is permitted, and an open-
spirited approach to this developing and fascinating practice is strongly COLT 1810H. Tales of Two Cities: Havana - Miami, San Juan - New
recommended. York.
Fall COLT1710C S01 18356 M 3:00-5:30(03) (S. Nakayasu) In this course we will compare representations of Havana and San Juan
in contemporary fiction and film to literary inscriptions of Cuban Miami
COLT 1710D. Exercises in Literary Translation.
and Puerto Rican New York. We will explore mapping the city as mapping
Exercises and investigations in the history, theory, and practice of literary
identity and city-writing as reconstruction and creation, viewing through the
translation. Students pursue individual projects for translation workshops.
eyes of children, tourists, and urban detectives. Authors include Antonio
Common exercises draw on Shakespeare translation, from classic
José Ponte, Roberto G. Fernández, Mayra Santos Febres and Ernesto
translations in Europe to unique examples like Nyerere’s Swahili Caesar
Quiñones. Good preparation for study abroad on the Brown-in-Cuba
and current projects like Shakespeare in Modern English or The Chinese
program. Not open to first year students.
Shakespeare. Prerequisite: one foreign-language course in literature at
1000-level (or equivalent). COLT 1810I. Gates of Asia.
An exploration of the growth of European knowledge of Asia from the rise
COLT 1810A. Onnade: The Woman's Hand in Classical Japanese and
of the Mongol empire through the Great Game and its aftermath. Primary
Medieval Western Literature.
sources include three kinds of accounts provided by travelers who set
A consideration of various genres of women's writing from 700 to 1450
their hearts on Asian exploration: personal narratives, official reports and
C.E. focusing on such issues as literary conventions, the relationship to
dispatches, and scholarly studies of the exotic cultures. Enrollment limited
the vernacular, the role of religion in education, and questions of gender
to 20.
and social class. Writers may include Berthgyth, Murasaki Shikibu, Sei
Shōnagon, Héloïse, Marie de France, the comtessa de Dia, Ladu Nijō, COLT 1810J. History and Aesthetic Form.
Julian of Norwich, Christine de Pisan, and various anonymous women. In this course, we will examine the co-articulation of theories of history with
theories of language and aesthetics. Focus will be on the interdependence
COLT 1810B. Aesthetics in the Colonial Frame.
between an emerging interest in history and the origin of language, and
Draws together works from a wide range of contexts and genres-
approaches to literary history, genre definition, and general aesthetic
Enlightenment philosophy, romantic travel literature, Arabic novels and
categories. Readings to be selected from Vice, Rousseau, Herder,
poems-to compose a conversation about aesthetics in the colonial context
Lessing, Schiller, Negel, Novalis, Lukacs, Adorno, Derrida and De Man.
of Egypt. Senior Seminar.
COLT 1810L. Housing Problems.
COLT 1810C. City (B)Lights.
Examines architectural figures and problems of containment and
Interdisciplinary explorations of the modern urban experience featuring
construction in a variety of literary and theoretical texts. We will consider
social sciences, literature and film. Convergences and differences in the
how images of buildings structure texts and outline spaces for subjectivity.
presentation of urban life in literature, film, the visual arts, urban planning,
Themes include the gothic, haunted houses, foundations, ruins, walls, and
and social sciences. City populations, bureaucracy, power groups,
doors. Texts selected from Descartes, Derrida, Goethe, Hegel, Austen,
alienation, urban crowds, the city as site of the surreal, are central themes.
Coleridge, Poe, Baudelaire, Melville, Hawthorne, Kafka, Tschumi and
Against the background of classic European urban images, American
Borges.
cities and literary works are foregrounded.
COLT 1810M. Image and Text: the Reconstitution of Narrative.
An examination of the tradition of illustrated narratives in several
premodern cultures: the early 11th-century Japanese Genji Monogatari,
the medieval English Canterbury Tales, and the ancient Indian epic the
Māhābharata. Discussion focuses on the nature of iconography and
symbolism; the historical privileging of text over image; the significance of
parallel visual and verbal representation and its implications for culturally-
specific theories of reading. Seminar.

20 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 21

COLT 1810N. Freud: Writer and Reader. COLT 1810Y. Modern Japanese Women Writers.
A broad survey of Freud's writings, with particular emphasis on An examination of women's writing from the Meiji Period (1868-1912) to
psychoanalysis' relevance to literary theory and cultural analysis. the present. Readings include works from such writers as Higuchi Ichiyo,
Readings include Freud's major works, as well as secondary sources Miyamoto Yuriko, Enchi Fumiko, and Tsushima Yūko. Topics include the
focused on applications to literary studies. relation of 'woman' to the modern, the legacy/construction of the past, the
implications of joryū bungaku (women's literature), and the problem of
COLT 1810O. Latin American Literature in Dialogue with France.
resistance and subversion.
Complicates the question of influence in Latin American literary and
intellectual self-fashioning, specifically with regard to France. Explores COLT 1810Z. Nietzsche.
the productivity and perplexity of this relationship through romanticism Intensive and extensive reading of Nietzsche and some of the reception
and articulations of the real (as realism, surrealism and magical that has made him so prominent in contemporary literary and cultural
realism). Approaching the twenty-first century, considers Latin American theory. Topics include Nietzsche's aesthetics, theory of history, the concept
perspectives on French theories of feminism, postmodernism and of the eternal return, European decadence, misogyny and anti-semitism.
globalization. Texts will be selected from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Horkheimer and Adorno,
Deleuze, Derrida, Irigaray, de Man, Kofman, Lacoue-Labarthe, Foucault,
COLT 1810P. Literature and Medicine.
Hamacher, Ronell, etc.
The purpose of this course is to examine a number of central issues in
medicine-disease, pain, trauma, madness, the image of the physician-- COLT 1811B. Postcolonial Theory and Fiction.
from the distinct perspectives of the sciences and the arts. Texts will be There is hardly a place in the contemporary world which has not somehow
drawn from authors such as Sophocles, Hawthorne, Gilman, Tolstoy, been touched by the histories and consequences of colonialism.
Kafka, Anderson, O'Neill, Hemingway, Ionesco, Verghese, Barker, Sacks, What does it mean, then, to speak about the postcolonial? Should
Foucault, Sontag, Scarry, Gawande and others. Open enrollment course: the postcolonial be seen as a new periodization in the study of world
lecture + section. literatures, a recent trend in critical theory, or another type of minority
discourse involving previously colonized peoples?
COLT 1810Q. Literature and Money in the Age of Paper.
Focuses on the complex and highly ambivalent relationship between COLT 1811D. Reading Revolution, Representations of Cuba, 1959-The
literature and money in nineteenth-century European literature. Works by Present.
Poe, Balzac, Dickens, Baudelaire, Stevenson, Hardy, and Zola. Relevant Considers the cultural and ideological impact of the Cuban revolution
philosophical writing by Smith, Marx, Nietzsche, and Derrida. inside and outside Cuba. Starting in the 1960s, reads Latin American
COLT 1810S. Literature and the City. "boom" novels, European theorists and U.S. civil rights activists. Moving
to today, addresses post-Soviet Cuba's literary production and the impact
Literature's obsession with the modern city, in 19th- and 20th-century
of new technologies on culture, as well as political change under Raúl
American, English, and French fiction and poetry, in writers such as Blake,
Castro. Fiction, film and essays by Castro, Sartre, García Márquez,
Whitman, Balzac, Dickens, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Eliot, Williams, Bellow,
Reinaldo Arenas, Antonio José Ponte, Fernando Pérez and others.
Morrison. Opportunities for work in other literatures and genres, e.g., in
Excellent preparation for the Brown-in-Cuba program.
Germany, Brecht.
COLT 1811F. The "Tenth Muse" Phenomenon.
COLT 1810T. Literature and the Culture of Capitalism.
The texts and contexts of women writing in English, Spanish and French,
This course will examine the literary responses to capitalism in terms
during the sixteenth and especially seventeenth centuries. Often dubbed
of five organizing tropes: regionalism, urbanization, consumerism,
"Tenth Muses," these first early modern women writers to gain public
aestheticism, and modernism. Our investigation will begin sometime
prominence wrote iconoclastic texts and/or epitomized socially sanctioned
in the early 19th-century with the moment that consolidated conditions
scripts for women. Authors include: Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Lucas
favorable for industrialization and conclude in the first decade of the 20th-
Cavendish, Sor Juana, Mme de Lafayette, Maria de Zayas.
century with literary modernism and the collapse of the cultural myths of
progressive enlightenment and democracy. Readings include texts by COLT 1811H. The Idea of Beauty.
Wordsworth, Malthus, Sue, Mayhew, Marx, H. Rider Haggard, Stowe, What does it mean to be beautiful in classical and European literature?
Carroll, Zola, Wilde, Stoker, Freud. Three papers and a final essay. How is beauty defined by thinkers from Plato to Benjamin? Readings from
the classical, medieval, Renaissance, and modern periods are brought into
COLT 1810U. Angela's Ashes and What Went Before: Irish
question by works concerning the problems of aesthetics. Works by Plato,
Immigration and Literary Creation.
Aristotle, Horace, Augustine, Dante, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Racine,
Readings in the major works of Joyce, Beckett and Farrell, without
Tolstoy and others in addition to readings from the history of aesthetics
forgetting Jonathan Swift and William Butler Yeats.
from Kant through the present.
COLT 1810V. Marx and Modern Literature.
COLT 1811I. The Nordic Legacy: Ibsen, Strindberg, Munch and
A contrastive and integrative study of the range of Marx's writings and
Bergman.
works by writers such as Shakespeare, Dickens, Baudelaire, Flaubert,
This course examines the work of four major Scandinavian artists. As key
Woolf, and Stevens. Examines Marx's leading concepts in philosophy,
figures in the development of modern theater, painting and film, these four
history, economics, ideology, and aesthetics in relation to the particularities
figures share a number of common concerns: challenging the pieties of
of literary forms. One or two short papers and a longer final study of a
bourgeois mores; reconceiving the relations between the sexes; moving
literary work chosen from the student's major field. Enrollment limited to
from the social to the metaphysical; undermining the unitary view of the
30.
self; and forging an artistic "language" through which the in-dwelling power
COLT 1810X. Mirror for the Romantic: The Tale of the Gengi and The of the psyche can be revealed.
Story of the Stone.
COLT 1811J. The Paternalistic Thiller and other Studies in Colonial
In East Asian Buddhist culture, the mirror is a symbol of the mind in both
Fiction.
its intellectual and emotional aspects. These masterworks detail the lives
The impact of colonialism on European fiction from the rise of empire to its
and loves of Prince Genji, cynosure of the medieval Japanese court and
decline and fall, focusing on authors who wrote from direct contact with the
Jia Baoyu, the last hope of an influential Chinese clan during the reign of
peoples of Africa and Asia, such as Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, T.E.
Manchus. We examine both works as well as the sources of Genji and
Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and Isak Dinesen. Topics will include romantic
literary aesthetics of the Tang dynasty. Prerequisites: COLT 0710, RELS
images of conquest, imperial ideology in literature, differing attitudes
0040 (0088) or 0100 (0006), or permission of the instructor.
towards acculturation, and the changing symbolism of exotic settings.

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COLT 1811L. Travel, Tourism, Trafficking through the Ages. COLT 1811W. Visual Obsessions: Japanese Film, Fiction, and
Why go away to find ourselves? How does the self constitute itself Modernity.
“elsewhere”? This course considers the genre of travel writing and The pervasiveness of visual obsessions in contemporary Japanese culture
its theory: how are roots, routes, and rootlessness treated in diverse prompts us to rethink the impact of modernity in terms of visuality. Through
racial, spiritual, sexual, national, and imperial encounters. Today, when the examination of a wide range of filmic, literary, and visual art forms
cosmopolitan tourists, intellectuals, or exotic and erotic adventurers produced in Japan from the 1920s to the 2000s, this course explores
share the same beach as downtrodden, abject refugees and their the question of visuality as a historically and technologically conditioned
traffickers, what are the cultural, ethical and political implications of way of seeing. The issues to be considered in this class include: the
leisurely seeking out (self-) discovery, disappearing authenticity, and construction of "Japanese" aesthetics, orientalism, ocularcentrism, the
commodified otherness? Readings include Herodotus, Equiano, Chatwin, problems of interiority and the subject, the relation between habit and the
Kingsley, Montagu, Darwin, Twain, Miller, Durrell, Baldwin, Phillips, Iyer, everyday, and cultural nationalism. This course will introduce important
Houellebecq, Woolf, Thompson, Theroux, Baudrillard theoretical concepts about vision and modernity, asking students to
interrogate these concepts through the close examination of specific
COLT 1811N. Persons and Portraits: Self in Early Modern Europe.
Japanese texts and films discussed in class. Writers, filmmakers, and
Challenges the presumed supremacy of the "modern subject," the
visual artists include: Tanizaki Jun'ichirô, Edogawa Rampo, Abé Kôbô,
sovereign rational mind personified by Descartes. Rival theories of self
Karatani Kôjin, Ozu Yasujirô, Kurosawa Akira, Ichikawa Kon, Suzuki
in Machiavelli, Luther, Montaigne, Hobbes, Pascal, and Spinoza are
Seijun, and Murakami Takashi.
explored alongside the richly embodied "persons" pictured in painting
(Titian, Rembrandt, Velázquez), conduct literature (Castiglione, La COLT 1811X. Marx and his Critics.
Rochefoucauld), drama (Milton, Molière, Calderón), psychological fiction This course will focus on a close study of the work of Karl Marx and its
(La Fayette), and satiric prose (La Bruyére). legacy for critical theory. The first part of the course will be dedicated to a
reading of Marx's most important texts, with special emphasis given to his
COLT 1811O. Modernism: From Paris to Athens, 1900s - 1950s.
theories of economy, of ideology, alienation and fetishism. The second part
The course examines Modernism as it developed in major European cities.
will be dedicated to a reading of some of Marx's most important readers:
Apart from focusing on major venues of modernism (Zurich, Berlin, Paris)
Lukacs, Gramsci, Althusser, Zizek and Derrida. Instructor's permission
it centers on marginal geographical spaces with specific emphasis on
required.
Athens, Greece. It further explores the rise of such movements as Cubism,
Futurism, Dadaism and Surrealism and proceeds to explore the reaction of COLT 1811Y. Genius and Melancholia in the Renaissance.
Greek modernists to these movements. Explores Renaissance accounts of genius, genial inspiration, and
melancholia, and their accompanying ideas of intellection and immortality.
COLT 1811Q. Poisonous or Prophetic?.
Primary materials include Dürer, Montaigne, Rabelais, Ficino, Ariosto,
Wright's Native Son, Burrough's Naked Lunch, Derrida's Specters of Marx,
Erasmus, Saint Teresa, and Luther. Secondary or contemporary texts
and Rimbaud.
include Warburg, Panofsky, Saxl, Klibansky, Wind, Benjamin, Kierkegaard,
COLT 1811S. Philosophy and Literature of German Romanticism. and Sebald.
A fateful collaboration between philosophy and literature was centered in
COLT 1811Z. Literature and the American Presidency.
Germany roughly between 1788 (Schiller's 'Gods of Greece') and 1807
We shall read widely in writings by, and about, selected American
(Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit). A survey of the major literature of this
presidents, but also focus on the ways in which presidents have used
period, organized thematically, will serve as an introduction to this complex
literature as a dictional source in their own writing and thinking. We will
phenomenon. Authors include (in translation) Fichte, Goethe, Hölderlin,
attend also to the relationship of culture to power as evidenced in other
Novalis, Schelling, Schiller, and Tieck.
textual media, such as film.
COLT 1811T. Levantine Cities: Alexandria, Istanbul, Athens.
COLT 1812A. Literatures of Immigration.
Explores the literary and filmic imagination of three Eastern Mediterranean
Why do people migrate? How do literary genres, including poetry, fiction,
cities, Alexandria, Istanbul, and Athens. It examines the history, culture
autobiography and memoir, characterize immigrant experiences? How is
and politics of these cities and the ways in which they emerge in literature,
the experience of "coming from somewhere else" similar and different for
film, poetry and travelogues. How is the city defined in these works?
each subsequent generation of immigrants? How does literature indicate
How are social tensions addressed, such as those between Greeks and
the impacts of migration on the culture, politics and economics of the
Turks and Arabs or between Christians, Muslims and Jews? How are
countries of immigration and emigration? How do literatures of immigration
thematic and historical issues resolved, such as those involving antiquity
imagine the past, present and future of networks and communities of
and modernity, tradition and modernization, colonialism and nationalism,
religion and secularism? How are these cities defined in the works of immigrants? Focusing on twentieth-century literary texts and the socio-
historical context of mass migration, the first half of the course examines
western writers? Enrollment limited to 30.
immigration literature in the U.S., the second half of the course explores
COLT 1811U. Literature and the Arts. literatures of immigration beyond the U.S., and the course concludes with
Readings in the apparitions and articulations of the arts in fiction, an inquiry into immigration in our presently globalizing age.
philosophy, criticism and poetry. Focus on the interaction between
COLT 1812B. Aesthetics and Politics (ENGL 1900E).
language and other media, the figure of the artist, problems of expression
Interested students must register for ENGL 1900E.
and performance. Readings from Diderot, Hegel, Balzac, Hoffmann,
Baudelaire, Poe, Nietzsche, Wagner and Mann. COLT 1812C. The Ethics of Romanticism (ENGL 1560Y).
Interested students must register for ENGL 1560Y.
COLT 1812F. Violence and Representation.
Traces diverse genealogies from which to theorize violence and its relation
to aesthetics. We will identify a disciplinary philology for “violence” as a
signifier within visual culture, art practice and literature; historicize key
transitions in varied invocations of violence in representation; study texts
(photography, film, novel, installation) that create a space where violence
can be discussed as both everyday and extraordinary. Some issues
to be considered: representability in moments of historical crisis (war,
colonialism, genocide); the efficacy of genres and artistic movements in
representing violence (tragedy, surrealism, theater of cruelty); and the
violence of representation (surveillance, spectatorship, voyeurism).

22 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 23

COLT 1812H. "Women's Literary Make-up": Mirrors, Maquillage and COLT 1812V. War, Anti-War, Postwar: Culture and Contestation in the
the Tenth Muse. Americas.
Focuses on the problem of creative inspiration for women writers and how This course addresses the relationship among language, war and the
the pursuit of aesthetic perfection, both somatic and literary as well as their arts from the mid-twentieth century on. Even as armies engage in combat
interrelation, becomes a recurring motif in women's writing from various around the globe, the term "war" legitimates a much broader spectrum of
traditions. Readings will include fiction and poetry from the English, situations, lending them the structure of organized hostility and the moral
Japanese, and Arab traditions, both modern and pre-modern. This is opposition of right to wrong. From the "Cold War" to the "War on Terror",
an undergraduate seminar open to juniors and seniors. Prerequisite: to Argentina's "Dirty War" and Cuba's "War on Imperialism", literature,
coursework in literature and at least one course in gender studies/ cinema, visual arts and community-based projects have responded to real
women's studies. Instructor permission required. and rhetorical declarations of "war." Drawing from U.S. and Latin American
contexts, we will explore a range of responses and challenges.
COLT 1812I. Collective Struggles and Cultural Politics in the Global
South. COLT 1812W. Love, Adultery, and Sexuality (RUSS 1450).
Traces the historical and ideological mapping of the North-South axis and Interested students must register for RUSS 1450.
the regional mythologies informed by racism, empire and nationalism.
COLT 1812X. Literature and History: Russian Historical Imagination
We will examine the ways in which imagined geographical hierarchies in the European Context (RUSS 1600).
continue to shape cultural and political struggles and the vectors of Interested students must register for RUSS 1600.
globalization. Along with readings on imperial histories, liberal and
neoliberal political economies, and postcolonialism this class seeks COLT 1812Y. Central Europe: An Idea and its Literature (SLAV 1790).
to establish connections between resistant narratives and collective Interested students must register for SLAV 1790.
struggles in the Global South. We will discuss political philosophies of COLT 1813B. Dying God (CLAS 1930B).
Marx, Gramsci, Arendt, Fanon, Harvey and Schwarz, as well as the works Interested students must register for CLAS 1930B.
of Achebe, Hurston, Kincaid, Rushdie, Roy, Sembene, and Wright. First
year students require instructor permission. COLT 1813C. Erotic Desire in the Premodern Mediterranean (CLAS
1750L).
COLT 1812J. Poetry and Ethics. Interested students must register for CLAS 1750L.
If history is, as Charles Olson claims, a "form of attention" and we are all
participants in a collective reality relative to our capacity for language use, COLT 1813D. Issues in World Literature (ENGL 1761Y).
what ethical issues come to bear on what the poet chooses to attend to-- Interested students must register for ENGL 1761Y.
not only as subject matter but as form? Can poetic language be sufficiently COLT 1813E. Chinese Women, Gender and Feminism from Historical
responsive to the challenge of empathy? Is there an ethics of attention? and Transnational Perspectives (EAST 1950B).
Guided by philosophical texts, we shall investigate ethical possibilities in a Interested students must register for EAST 1950B.
range of world poetries.
COLT 1813F. Communication Culture and Literary Politics (MCM
COLT 1812K. European Intellectual and Cultural History: Exploring 1503Q).
the Modern, 1880-1914 (HIST 1220). Interested students must register for MCM 1503Q.
Interested students must register for HIST 1220.
COLT 1813H. God, Sex and Grammar: Literary Ethics in Medieval
COLT 1812M. Erotic Desire in the Premodern Mediterranean (CLAS Europe.
1750L). What does it mean to read and write ethically? While modern culture
Interested students must register for CLAS 1750L. values intellectual property, many medieval texts celebrated what we
COLT 1812N. Culture and Anarchy (ENGL 1511I). call plagiarism. On the other hand, medieval thinkers saw serious
Interested students must register for ENGL 1511I. consequences in literature, which could lead authors and readers to
heaven or hell. But then as now, ethics were rarely clear-cut, subject
COLT 1812O. Lying, Cheating, and Stealing (ENGL 1760V). to forces as diverse as religion, sexual desire, capitalism, and even
Interested students must register for ENGL 1760V. language itself. Reading some of the great authors of the period, as well
COLT 1812P. Essaying the Essay (CLAS 1120J). as modern critical reflections, we will explore the ethical dimension of
Interested students must register for CLAS 1120J. literary production in the medieval world and in our own society.
COLT 1812S. Violence and the Multiple Responses of Medieval COLT 1813I. The Colonial and the Postcolonial Marvelous.
France. A celebration and critique of the marvelous--as the strange, wondrous,
Examines violence and its representations from a variety of perspectives: magical, or unreal--as it has been wielded in Spanish American and
literary, historical, psychological, etc. Different literary forms (11th - 13th) related literatures (French Caribbean, Brazilian). We follow the marvelous
introduce conflicts between competing value systems, problems raised from European exoticizing of the New World during the colonial period to
by militant religion, vendettas and the pursuit of justice. Across the gamut its postcolonial incarnations in "magical realism" and beyond. We attend
of appetites and emotions, violence takes a variety of shapes, producing particularly to the political, ideological, social, and commercial implications
broken hearts and broken heads. The beautiful seductiveness of violence, of the marvelous in writers including Carpentier, Chamoiseau, Columbus,
despite its horrors, is frequently transformed into artistic and literary Esquivel, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and García Márquez. Readings in
expression, from the highest forms of Western tradition to the cheap English, though you may read texts in the original French, Spanish, or
exploitations of pulp fiction. What can the Middle Ages teach us about Portuguese.
violence, yesterday and today? Not open to first year students. COLT 1813K. The Problem of the Vernacular.
COLT 1812T. On Being Bored (ENGL 1511L). It has been said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
Interested students must register for ENGL 1511L. Under what conditions do dialects, vernaculars, creoles, and slangs
become mediums for literary and artistic expression? How have writers in
COLT 1812U. Queer Relations: Aesthetics and Sexuality (ENGL different cultures managed the relationship between their "official" national
1900R). languages and their more intimate mother tongues? This course explores
Interested students must register for ENGL 1900R. this problem in a variety of literary traditions, including Chinese, Arabic,
Greek, Hebrew, Scots, Latin and the Romance vernaculars, and a variety
of other languages.

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24 Comparative Literature

COLT 1813M. Making a List. COLT 1813Z. Soil: The Earth and Environmental Writing.
The list is one of the most ancient and enduring figures of rhetoric and Why do people fight over soil? In an increasingly urbanized world, how
one of the most versatile means of organizing literary works. From the have the ways we talk about soil, earth, and land shifted? In this class, we
catalogues of Homeric epic to the postmodern fables of Borges to new will explore the politics and aesthetics of writing about soil in its particular
digital media, from medieval encyclopedism to Renaissance copia, from relations to ecology, homeland, geography, and race. Readings include
the descriptive realism of novels to modernist techniques of collage, the Homer’s Odyssey, Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and ecological criticism from
simple list has produced an astonishing variety of effects in a wide range ancient China to Rachel Carson and Ramachandra Guha and beyond.
of genres and authors. We will read widely in this course, from many Limited to 20.
periods, literatures, authors, and genres. COLT 1814A. Fashion and Power (GNSS 1960Y).
COLT 1813N. Early Modern Women's Writing. Interested students must register for GNSS 1960Y.
Interested in women writers, feminism? If so, it's vital to understand their COLT 1814D. East-West Encounters: Politics and Fictions of
early modern origins. This course explores the rich feminist tradition Orientalism.
enacted in the often edgy texts of women writing on the cusp of modernity. We will explore the myth of the East that develops in Europe during
We study writers from England, France, Latin America, North America,
the Enlightenment in the wake of the extremely popular and influential
and Spain, focusing on self-fashioning, gender and sexuality, love and translations of The Thousand and One Nights (Alf Layla wa Layla) in the
marriage, imagined worlds, religion, eccentricity, and writing and fame. early eighteenth century. We will focus on narratives of the encounter
Authors include Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Sor Juana between East and West, on the discovery and construction of the Oriental
Inés de la Cruz, Mme de Lafayette, María de Zayas. Enrollment limited to “Other,” and on its representation in the literary and visual culture of the
20. Texts and class in English. Enlightenment. Particular attention will be paid to the figure of Shahrazad
COLT 1813O. Adventures of the Avant-Garde. and the theme of the harem. We will study some modern versions of the
In the early years of the twentieth century, a series of artistic movements Arabian Nights.
rippled across the Western hemisphere, exploding conceptions of art COLT 1814F. Erotic Desire in the Premodern Mediterranean (CLAS
and culture while reconfiguring international relations. Explores those 1750L).
movements, from their predecessors (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé), Interested students must register for CLAS 1750L.
through overlapping –isms (Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism, Vorticism,
Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism), to avatars in the Americas. In keeping COLT 1814G. Political Commitment in Arabic Literature.
with the avant-garde's cross-pollinating spirit, we study texts from a variety This course will explore the history of and debates surrounding political
of traditions, forms, and genres: from poetry through prose to manifestoes, consciousness and commitment in modern Arabic literature from the
from painting and photography to film, music, and dance, touching on mid-20th century to the present. Through close readings of mainly
questions of translation and translatability between languages, cultures, novels, novellas, and short stories, we will ask how, why, and with what
and art-forms. Enrollment limited to 25. consequences Arab authors have challenged political realities with
Spr COLT1813OS01 26504 TTh 2:30-3:50(11) (M. Clayton) literary expression. We will trace the diverse strategies by which authors
articulated their criticisms and envisioned justice grounded in their political
COLT 1813P. Captive Imaginations: Writing Prison in the Middle context. Topics and themes will include socialist realism, resistance
Ages. literature, alienation, self-criticism, and responses to colonialism and
Many great works of the Middle Ages were written in prison or about the censorship. No knowledge of Arabic required.
experience of imprisonment. Reading some of these masterpieces, we
will discover why the medieval prison was such a fruitful space for poetic COLT 1814L. Apartheid in Post-Apartheid South African Literature.
creation, and how the perspective of incarcerated writers helped to shape In this course, we explore the political stances that contemporary South
a diversity of literary traditions. Topics will include fortune and free will, African writing articulates towards the apartheid regime. We bring
sexual and cultural difference, and the construction of the individual. We particular attention to the textual emergence of queer subjectivities. During
will also explore the nature of medieval systems of captivity, which differed apartheid (1948-1994), South Africa became a global symbol of racial
greatly from those of modern society. Selected authors: Boethius, Mas'ud injustice, and several South African writers became famous for their anti-
Sa'd Salman, Juan Ruiz, Chaucer, François Villon. apartheid literary production. Since 1994, critics have looked for new
frames in which to analyze a “new” literature. In the search for “newness,”
COLT 1813Q. Literature and Judgement. however, we may forget to consider how the “old”–apartheid–reappears in
There exists a close but complex relationship between the acts of making post-apartheid literature. Authors include Zackie Achmat, K. Sello Duiker,
literature and making judgments. This course will explore some of these Phaswane Mpe, and Zoe Wicomb.
relationships and ask, for instance: how does judgment weigh upon the
literary act? how do literary considerations bear on our making judgments? COLT 1814M. Postcolonial Literature + Thought in the Middle East
what criteria are called forth in both of these moments? Texts treated and North Africa.
will be literary, critical-analytical, legal, and cinematic, and include such This course examines postcolonial literature and thought in the ME
authors as Arendt, Benjamin, Derrida, Freud, Henry James, Kafka, Kant, and North Africa through literature, theory and film. During the early
Primo Levi, Nietzsche, Tolstoy and Verga. and mid-20th century, anticolonial movements transformed the region’s
cultural landscape, igniting new intellectual circles and literary scenes.
COLT 1813R. The Ekphrastic Mode in Contemporary Literature (ENGL We will study these movements as a launching ground for regional
1762B). culture, interrogating local anti-colonial thought in works by writers such
Interested students must register for ENGL 1762B. as Memmi and Fanon, and examining its evolution from the 1960’s-1990’s
COLT 1813V. The Cash Nexus: Economy and Literature. in work from Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Morocco
At a time when human existence is grounded with unprecedented and Palestine. How did intellectuals and artists articulate issues like
conviction in a rigid set of utilitarian principles and materialistic values, the national liberation, Westernization, radical culture, feminism, Marxism and
relationship between literature and various modes of economic exchange Orientalism?
presents itself as a richly rewarding field of research. The texts we will
focus on offer rare insights into the ways monetary factors affect personal
identity, interpersonal relationships, and social life in general. These works
reflect a diachronic tension between human interactions and financial
transactions that will be the basis of our critical engagement with a series
of issues and questions that are more pertinent today than ever before.
COLT 1813X. Getting Emotional: Passionate Theories (ENGL 1560W).
Interested students must register for ENGL 1560W.

24 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 25

COLT 1814Q. Species Matters: Animals in Literature, Film, and COLT 1815F. Memory, Commemoration, Testimony.
Theory. In this course we will study problems of remembering and forgetting in
Nonhuman animals constitute the limit against which humans define a variety of texts including poetry, philosophy, psychoanalysis, memoirs,
themselves; at the same time, they challenge such boundaries. Thinking public monuments, memory studies and trauma theory. We will explore
about animals, then, always also means exploring our own humanity. the roles of language and representation in dealing with the past, the
In this course, we will draw on the vast archive of literature, philosophy, temporality of the self, the operation of the unconscious, the memorial and
and art that engages animals in order to reconsider what and how these the monument. We will also look at the politics of memory in relation to the
representations mean. Considering our complex relationships with other cultural traumas of slavery, the Holocaust, Viet Nam and 9/11. Readings
animals, we will address questions of ontology, aesthetics, and ethics: from Rousseau, Hegel, Wordsworth, Proust, Derrida and de Man; Freud,
What makes an animal? Can animals be represented? How should animal Caruth, Saidiya Hartman, Segalen; Arendt and Reznikoff.
suffering affect us? Spr COLT1815F S01 26357 MWF 1:00-1:50(06) (S. Bernstein)
COLT 1814R. Reflections from Damaged Life: Freud, Adorno, COLT 1815G. Repetition: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud (GRMN
Blanchot, Derrida (GRMN 1891). 1200D).
Interested students must register for GRMN 1891. Interested students must register for GRMN 1200D.
COLT 1814S. The Balkans, Europe's Other?: Literature, Film, History. COLT 1815I. Torn Halves of Modernism.
Introduces the modern Balkans through a critical examination of literary This course analyzes the constitutive contradictions of modernist works
and visual, historiographic and political, narratives. The course considers from a global perspective. We will address, for instance, tensions
the contestation over a shared historical past and interreligious geographic between the periphery and the metropolis, city and countryside, realism
space through common and divergent master narratives, motifs, myths, and modernism, aesthetic autonomy, commodification and political
and recurring discourses. It also examines the region’s aesthetic, religious, commitment. We will also examine these questions across various media:
and political relation to Europe. Do the Balkans constitute a traumatized, novels, poetry, photography, architecture and film. Readings include works
“balkanized,” self-colonized, abject modernity at Europe’s edges, its by Dos Passos, Faulkner, Döblin, Manuel Maples Arce, Roberto Arlt,
inner alterity? Given the acclaim achieved by Balkan filmmakers since Patrícia Galvão.
1989, the course also asks how Balkan artists, caught in-between
COLT 1815O. Modern Greece in the World (MGRK 1240).
nationalism, Orientalism, Eurocentrism and globalization, assert agency
Interested students must register for MGRK 1240.
and subjectivity and captivate our imaginations.
COLT 1815P. The Coming Apocalypse: Between the Earth and the
COLT 1814T. Maghrebi Fiction and Psychoanalysis.
World (HMAN 1974L).
Recent fiction from the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya)
Interested students must register for HMAN 1974L.
in both French and Arabic has been preoccupied with mothers and
fathers, gestation and regeneration, inheritance and transmission, filled COLT 1815R. Germans and Jews (GRMN 1340Y).
with figures for desires and origins blocked or diverted. In this course, Interested students must register for GRMN 1340Y.
we will read Maghrebi literature together with works of psychoanalytic COLT 1815T. Narratives of Disability in Greek and Latin Literature
theory, focusing in particular on uncertain origins and aborted futures, (CLAS 1070)..
geographies of the North African landscape and of the soul. Texts by Interested students must register for CLAS 1070.
Achaari, Berrada, Chraïbi, Djebar, Kateb, al-Koni, Mustaghanimi, Wattar;
Deleuze & Guattari, Fanon, Freud, Jameson, Jung, Lacan. Students of COLT 1815U. Encountering Monsters in Comparative Literature.
French or Arabic invited to read in the original. What is a monster? What happens when one encounters a monster? This
literature-based seminar considers monsters in different literary traditions,
COLT 1814U. Politics of Reading. including ancient epic, folktale, poetry, theory, science fiction, and cinema.
What do we do when we read? And do we even do something, or, as Monstrous figures from different cultural traditions, places, eras, genres,
Blanchot suggests, do we rather let be? While being true to Michel de and forms will guide us through various representations of monstrosity
Certeau’s plea for a “politics of reading” and an “autonomy of the reader”, —a concept which both invites and defies definition. We will ask: What
we will question its binary logic (active vs. passive): 1. by looking closely cultural and imaginative needs do monsters fill? How do monsters help
at the (de)construction of a “sovereign reader” in Hobbes’ Leviathan; 2. us think about identity politics, and the cultural production of ideas of self
by analyzing the reading imperative—“Read!”—as it is staged in Plato’s and other? To what extent are monsters tools of ideological oppression,
and, above all, in Sade’s erotics; 3. by taking seriously Walter Benjamin’s and to what extent are monsters liberatory figures that offer conceptual
paradoxical intuition that one should “read what was never written”. alternatives to systems of oppression and violence?
COLT 1814Y. Posthumanism and the Ends of Man. COLT 1815V. "Blitzlesen", or Fascism and Speed-reading: Deleuze,
Have we ever been human? As mechanical implants, virtual Cixous, Heidegger.
extensions, and organic interdependencies challenge self-contained Today everyone, it seems, is a lightning reader, or "Blitzleser". Rather than
conceptualizations of human being, posthumanist theories invite us to feel guilty about this, our course will ask: what would it mean to speed-
rethink our self-understanding. In this course, we will explore the human read responsibly? Reading is, like democracy, always a matter of counting,
as a fluid category in perpetual motion. Focusing on female and gender of deciding which frequencies count (whether of letters, words, motifs etc.).
nonconforming bodies, which have traditionally been situated at the limits Speed-reading risks overloading democracy with too much information
of the human, we will analyze the critical potential of hybrids, androids, and too many dots to connect, feeding paranoiac narratives in the style
and cyborgs. Readings among others by Ovid, the Brothers Grimm, E.T.A. of QAnon or indeed Nazism itself. How to speed-read like a democrat?
Hoffmann, Han Kang, and Octavia Butler; films will include Metropolis, Our eyes will dart from Deleuze's claim that Cixous invented stroboscopic
Mad Max: Fury Road, and the series West World. literature – difficult literature which only becomes readable when one
COLT 1815A. Apocalypse. reads quickly – to fascism's obsession with speed, which led Hannah
The End of the World is central to the Abrahamic faiths. From the Jewish Arendt to claim fascism desires "only a movement that is constantly kept
sources, through Christian and Islamic tradition und until the present day, in motion." Key authors include: Bernhard, Woolf, Martinetti, Deleuze,
the idea of the End of World is decisive for the understanding of major Guattari, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger. Media: The Lighthouse,
events in history, such as the birth of Islam or Modernity. Through readings Speed Racer.
across the religious and the secular traditions starting with the Torah and COLT 1815W. How to Do Things with Modernism (HMAN 1976F).
ending with Steve Bannon and ISIS. Interested students must register for HMAN 1976F.

Comparative Literature 25
26 Comparative Literature

COLT 1815Z. Between Word and Image: The Twentieth-Century Arab COLT 2520F. Theories of the Lyric.
Avantgarde. Through readings of recent critical discussions of the lyric genre, we
What is the Arab avantgarde, and why is visuality its main project? How will explore more general methodological problems of literary theory.
do experimental works of art and literature question dominant historical Questions to be raised include: the role of form, structure and tropes in
and political narratives? This seminar explores form-agitating literary analyzing poetry; problems of subjectivity and voice; the relation between
and artistic works that emerged from major Arab cities in the twentieth poetry, history and politics; the function of reading; and the problematic
century. It examines the role of the metaphorical and literal image as "objectivity" of criticism. Readings from Jakobson, Benveniste, Jauss,
a new mode of storytelling, as an act of witnessing and documenting. Benjamin, Johnson, De Man, Lacoue-Labarthe, Agamben, Badiou and
Throughout the course, we will also touch on themes of memory and Derrida. Focus on poets Hölderlin, Baudelaire and Celan.
nostalgia, postcolonial nationalism, freedom and commitment, exile COLT 2540C. Romanticism and Cultural Property (ENGL 2560Y).
and return, as we navigate the complexities and developments of Arab Interested students must register for ENGL 2560Y.
cultural modernisms. Most primary texts will be read in Arabic with English
translations offered when available. At least three years of Arabic (or COLT 2540D. After Postmodernism: New Fictional Modes (ENGL
equivalent) are required for enrollment. 2760X).
Interested students must register for ENGL 2760X.
COLT 1970. Individual Independent Study.
Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct COLT 2540E. Political Romanticism (GRMN 2320E).
section number and CRN to use when registering for this course. Interested students must register for GRMN 2320E.
COLT 1980. Group Independent Study. COLT 2540F. Romanticism and Cultural Property (ENGL 2560Y).
Section numbers vary by instructor. Please see the registration staff for the Interested students must register for ENGL 2560Y.
correct section number to use when registering for this course. COLT 2540M. Latin American Existential Literature (HISP 2520L).
COLT 1990. Senior Thesis Preparation. Interested students must register for HISP 2520L.
Special work or preparation of honors theses under the supervision of COLT 2540N. Alexandrian Poetry (CLAS 2930A).
a member of the staff. Open to honors students and to others. Section Interested students must register for CLAS 2930A.
numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section
number and CRN to use when registering for this course. COLT 2650A. Comparative Literature and Its Others.
Is there such a thing as comparative literacy? This course examines the
COLT 2450. Exchange Scholar Program. history and practices of Comparative Literature as a major discipline,
Fall COLT2450 S01 16551 Arranged ’To Be Arranged' including its self conceptualizations, its relations with national literatures
Spr COLT2450 S01 25215 Arranged ’To Be Arranged' and with other disciplines, and its evolving methods of reading. Texts
Spr COLT2450 S02 25216 Arranged ’To Be Arranged' include literary as well as theoretical ones.
COLT 2520A. City (B)Lights: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the COLT 2650C. Romantic Theory: Theirs and Ours.
Study of the City. Recent criticism will serve as the point of departure for looking into the
Literary texts from the U.S., England, France, and Germany, together relation of literary criticism to its Romantic history. Emphasis on how
with substantial readings in the social sciences and selected works of art "Romantic" problems inform contemporary criticism on such topics as
and cinema. Intended as a laboratory for interdisciplinary studies in an periodization, literature and history, theory of symbol and allegory, and
expansive educational spectrum for humanities Ph.Ds. the relation between literature and philosophy. Texts will be selected from
Benjamin, M.H. Abrahms, de Man, McGann, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy,
COLT 2520B. Dark and Cloudy Words: Metaphor and Poetry.
Chase, et. al.; Fichte, Schelling, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Schlegel, Novalis.
An examination of the philosophical significance of metaphor and its
literary function in poetry ranging from makurakotoba in the Man' yōshū to COLT 2650D. Theory of Comparative Literature.
kenningar in Skaldic poetry, to the use of the trope in a number of modern Designed to introduce students to some of the central theoretical issues
poets. Critical writings include works by Aristotle, Ki no Tsurayuki, Shelley, that define the discipline of Comparative Literature through the study
Christine Brooke-Rose, Max Black, Donald Davidson, Paul Ricoeur, and of twelve central texts in the field. We will begin with Erich Auerbach's
Jacques Derrida. foundational text Mimesis, and end with Gayatri Spivak's Death of a
Discipline. In between the authors to be read and analyzed will be Bakhtin,
COLT 2520C. Irony: Language and Failure.
Lukacs, Barthes, Derrida, DeMan, Jameson, Greenblatt and others.
A study in the trope of irony and the ways in which it complicates the
Open to graduate students, and to undergraduates by permission of the
possibility of understanding. Focus on Socratic irony, the dialogue, and
Romantic irony. We will also consider the epistemological implications of instructor.
irony and the role it plays in contemporary criticism. Readings from Plato, COLT 2650E. Theory of Lyric Poetry.
Quintillian, Diderot, Hegel, Schlegel, Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Lukács, No description available.
Booth, De Man, Rorty and Derrida. COLT 2650F. Irony.
COLT 2520D. The Literature of the Americas. A study of the trope of irony and its evaluation, especially in the Romantic
Forsaking the dominant Eurocentrism in comparative literary studies, this tradition. Focus on the epistemological implications of irony and the role it
seminar will search for the common links between the diverse literatures of plays in the philosophical tradition and in contemporary criticism. Readings
North and Latin America, approached in relation to one another rather than from Plato, Hegel, Schlegel, Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Lukács, Booth, De
to "Old World" models. Authors to be considered include Margaret Atwood, Man, Rorty and Derrida.
Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, William Faulkner, Gabriel García-Márquez, COLT 2650G. Literary Readings in Aesthetic Theory.
Clarice Lispector, Machado de Assis, Toni Morrison and João Guimarães The seminar will examine not just the major themes but also the rhetorical
Rosa. complexities of a number of powerful texts in the history of aesthetic
COLT 2520E. Dialectics of Word and Image. theory. Authors to be considered include Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Burke,
Explores how proximities and interactions of text and image construct and Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno. Literary texts
complicate meaning. It brings together a constellation of theoretical and will be considered in conjunction with these texts, sometimes by way of
historical readings that have bearing on particular problems generated at famous arguments or exchanges (e.g., Heidegger and Staiger on Mörike).
the nexus of word and image. Readings by Horace, Abd al-Qahir Jurjani, COLT 2650H. On the Sublime (GRMN 2660A).
Lévi-Strauss, Ricoeur, Derrida, Mitchell and others will anchor a cross- Interested students must register for GRMN 2660A.
disciplinary investigation of European and non-European paradigms of the
relationship between text and image in various literary and visual cultures COLT 2650N. Hamlet: Appropriation, Mediation, Theory (ENGL
since late antiquity. We will examine specific examples of the interaction 2360X).
between word and image in several Islamic manuscripts. Interested students must register for ENGL 2360X.

26 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 27

COLT 2650T. Foundations of Literary Theory (POBS 2600C). COLT 2820A. New Directions for Comparative Literature.
Interested students must register for POBS 2600C. In this seminar we will read a number of recent critical and theoretical
works (not limited to the humanities) which may fruitfully suggest new
COLT 2650U. Theory, Technics, Religion (ENGL 2901K).
directions for literary studies. Our readings may include topics such as
Interested students must register for ENGL 2901K.
the new history of capitalism, sociological approaches to the modern
COLT 2650V. Italian Theory: In and Out (HMAN 2400U). choice architecture of emotions, recent philosophy of science, border
Interested students must register for HMAN 2400U. studies and migration, decolonization, ecocriticism and public humanities.
COLT 2650W. Vision and Visualization in Literature: The Rhetoric of Participants will be expected to contribute to the syllabus according to their
Enargeia (CLAS 2110K). own research interests.
Interested students must register for CLAS 2110K. COLT 2820B. Fiction and History.
COLT 2650X. Police, Strike, Justice: Revisiting Walter Benjamin's Focuses on how the historical fiction that has flourished over the past
"Critique of Violence" (GRMN 2662F). three decades challenges the notions of objectivity and totalization, while
Interested students must register for GRMN 2662F. providing alternative viewpoints for the reconstruction and reinterpretation
of the past. Authors to be considered include E. L. Doctorow, Gabriel
COLT 2650Y. Walter Benjamin Around 1921. Garcia-Marquez, Günter Grass, José Saramago Isabel Allende, Lídia
In 1921 Walter Benjamin was working simultaneously on three significant Jorge, Coover. Attention will also be paid to theoretical texts by Hayden
and interrelated essays: “Toward the Critique of Violence,” “The Task of White, Dominick LaCapra, Walter Benjamin, Linda Hutcheon, and Roger
the Translator,” and “Goethe’s Elective Affinities.” The seminar will focus Chartier.
on this set of writings as providing insights into Benjamin’s criticism as
a whole. After examining closely Benjamin’s essays on violence and on COLT 2820D. The "Tenth Muse" Phenomenon.
translation we will read Goethe’s novel and Benjamin’s study of it using The texts and contexts of women writing in English, Spanish and French,
the new translation and critical edition, Writings on Goethe (Stanford during the sixteenth and especially seventeenth centuries. Often dubbed
University Press), that will be appearing at the end of this year. Works will "Tenth Muses," these first early modern women writers to gain public
be read and discussed in English with attention to the German (seminar prominence wrote iconoclastic texts and/or epitomized socially sanctioned
participants with knowledge of German are encouraged to read the texts in scripts for women. Authors include: Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Lucas
the original language). Cavendish, Sor Juana, Mme de Lafayette, Maria de Zayas.
Fall COLT2650Y S01 18847 Th 1:00-3:30(06) (K. McLaughlin) COLT 2820E. What was Enlightenment?.
COLT 2720A. Advanced Practicum in Literary Translation. Emphasizes two of the Enlightenment's most durable artists-Mozart and
Jane Austen-situating them in the context of other writers of their times
Readings in theory of translation, and in monuments of literary translation
(such as Kant, Casanova, and Adam Smith) and modern appropriations of
from Renaissance times to the present, will be assigned to students
their work (in criticism and performance). Sub-themes are desire, reason,
needing further background in these areas. Students will each complete
education, and forms of otherness. Class hours include viewing time.
two projects: (1) by mid-semester, a critical treatment of a published
translation or a comparison of such translations; (2) for the final seminar COLT 2820F. Latin America and Theory.
presentation and paper, the student's own translation into English from Explores the engagement of Latin American literature and criticism
some literary text in a language familiar to the student. with non-Latin American bodies of literary and cultural theory (including
poststructuralism, postcolonialism, postmodernism and cultural studies),
COLT 2720B. Theory and Practice of Literary Translation.
addressing tensions between the autochthonous production of theoretical
Readings in the history and theory of translation from the Renaissance to
frameworks and their import from other contexts. Readings include the
the present, along with selected major examples of literature in English
Latin American Subaltern Studies group, Revista de Crítica Cultural,
translation. Students will write two papers: (1) an analysis of a theoretical
Rama, García Canclini, Sarlo, Richard and current new media theorists.
issue in translation, with ample attention to the historical context of that
Open to graduate students and qualified seniors.
issue; and (2) either a discussion of an important translation as a criticism
of the original work; or a critical comparison of several translations of an COLT 2820H. The Politics and Aesthetics of Masochism.
original work; or an annotated translation into English of a literary text from Masochism is defined as a, aestheticized positive, consensual investment
a language familiar to the student. in power relations. As such, it directly engages the relationship between
politics and aesthetic forms, but as a sexualized relationship. Masochism
COLT 2720C. Literary Translation.
articulates relations of gender in ways that seem to challenge traditional
Study and practice of translation as art and a potent form of literary
structures. Readings include novels and films, as well as theoretical
criticism. Translation is an act of interpretation, which informs the language
engagements with masochism.
of the translator and the text as a whole: context, intent, and language.
Discussion will include the impact of cultural difference, tone and time on COLT 2820I. Literature and the State of Exception.
translation, and the role of analytical as well as intuitive understanding of This course takes as its point of departure Walter Benjamin's famous
the original in the translator's endeavor. diagnosis of modernity as a paradoxical condition under which the
Spr COLT2720C S01 26358 TTh 9:00-10:20(05) (D. Levy) exception has become the rule. We will consider the aesthetic and political
implications of such a state of exception in nineteenth- century literature.
COLT 2720D. Translation: Theory and Practice. Authors include Baudelaire, DeQuincey, Arnold, Melville, Whitman,
This seminar will address the theory and practice of translation, and their Benjamin, Derrida, Nancy and Agamben.
place in the Humanities. Essays by translators, authors and scholars
will be drawn from a range of contexts, as will literary and historical COLT 2820L. Moderns and Primitives.
texts. Each participating student will work on a substantial translation Major writers, artists, and theorists of European modernism put a new
project over the course of the semester. The seminar is a requirement for emphasis on the status of primitive society and archaic pre-history. We
students completing the Department of Comparative Literature's Graduate will consider the works of Durkheim, Eliot, Joyce, Picasso, and others
Certificate in Translation Studies. Open only to graduate students. with reference to the anthropology and ethnography of their period, and to
subsequent post-colonial critique and controversy.

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28 Comparative Literature

COLT 2820M. Discourses of the Senses. COLT 2820U. Literature and Judgment.
A comparative study of a variety of discourses dealing with the relation Investigates the intersections between acts of literature and acts of
among the senses, the arts, and the problems of comparativity, judgment, between language and the law. How is literature to be judged,
interdisciplinarity, and intermediality. Topics will include ekphrasis, when is it "good" or "bad"? Does literature lie, and if so, does it matter?
synaesthesia, mysticism and the theory of correspondence, the Does it hide a crime? And, in turn: does literature provide its own particular
Gesamtkunstwerk, and the limits between media. Readings from kind of judgment, one that may make evident the very fictional status of
Condillac, Lessing, Kant, Swedenborg, the German Romantics, the law? Readings span from the Bible to contemporary post-colonial
Baudelaire, Wagner, Balzac, Lacoue-Labarthe, Nancy, Panofsky, Tschumi readings (Rousseau, Tolstoy, Zola, Freud, Kafka, Arendt, Benjamin, Henry
and others. James, Primo Levi, Coetzee, Sadegh Hedayat).
COLT 2820N. City (B)Lights. COLT 2820V. Nietzsche, Foucault, Latour (ENGL 2900K).
Interdisciplinary explorations of the modern urban experience featuring Interested students must register for ENGL 2900K.
social sciences, literature and film. Convergences and differences in the COLT 2820W. Ethical Turns (ENGL 2900N).
presentation of urban life in literature, film, the visual arts, urban planning, Interested students must register for ENGL 2900N.
and social sciences, including sociology, political economy, urban ecology.
City populations, bureaucracy, power groups, alienation, urban crowds, COLT 2820X. Things Not Entirely Possessed: Romanticism and
the city as site of the surreal, are central themes. Against the background History (ENGL 2561B).
of classic European urban images. American cities and literary works are Interested students must register for ENGL 2561B.
foregrounded. COLT 2821C. From Hegel to Nietzsche: Literature as/and Philosophy
COLT 2820O. Jacques Derrida's of Grammatology. (GRMN 2660O).
This course is an introduction to the thought of the French philosopher Interested students must register for GRMN 2660O.
Jacques Derrida. We will focus on his most important work, his COLT 2821L. Postcoloniality and Globalism (ENGL 2900Z).
"Grammatology", though a series of some of his essays will also be part Interested students must register for ENGL 2900Z.
of the readings. Other readings will include the works of authors crucial
to Derrida's thought and to an understanding of the "Grammatology": COLT 2821S. Historical Form.
Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure, Rousseau and Levi-Strauss. This class explores comparative literary approaches to historical narrative,
especially in the context of recent work in transnational studies. Questions
COLT 2820P. Aesthetics and the Eighteenth Century Subject. to be considered will include: what are the implications of transnational
The debates about taste, judgment, beauty, sentiment, and sensation in and postcolonial historiography for the formal study of historical writing and
the eighteenth century gave rise to the discourse of aesthetics as we know knowledge? What are the aesthetic resources of non-European traditions
it today, but they also exerted a powerful influence on how knowledge, for narrative analysis? What tropes and spatiotemporal frameworks do
virtue, and subjectivity were imagined in the post-enlightenment period. In writers use to narrate the connected past?
this course, we will examine some of the founding texts of aesthetic theory
from the era (including Locke, Smith, Burke, Lessing, and Kant), and then COLT 2821Z. Objects of (and in) Animation (MCM 2120H).
turn to consider how aesthetic questions informed and were taken up by Interested students must register for MCM 2120H.
Goethe's narrative of subject-formation in his Bildungsroman, Wilhelm COLT 2822B. Introduction to Italian Studies (ITAL 2100).
Meister's Apprenticeship. In English. Interested students must register for ITAL 2100.
COLT 2820Q. Culture and Politics in Cuba and the Caribbean. COLT 2822C. What Is Called Thinking? On Critical Styles (GRMN
Complicating standard narratives about intellectuals and the Cuban 2661T).
Revolution, explores writings whose relationship to the state is neither Interested students must register for GRMN 2661T.
affirmative nor oppositional. Focusing on journals and on recent work in
cultural theory, history, anthropology, and political science, addresses the COLT 2822K. Virgil's Aeneid (LATN 2010E).
evolution and potential of civil society; articulations of marginality; revisions Interested student must register for LATN 2010E.
of socialism and the Soviet legacy; and the mobility of theory. Spanish COLT 2822O. Literature and Philosophy: Case Studies of a Vexed
required. Relationship (GRMN 2662Q).
COLT 2820R. Postcolonial Melancholia. Interested students must register for GRMN 2662Q).
Figures of loss and defeat proliferate widely in the accounts of COLT 2822R. Metals, Mining, and Jewelry: Making the World Anew
colonization, national liberation, and decolonization in South Asia, Africa, (HMAN 2402D).
the Arab world, and the Americas. We will attend to the particularity of loss Interested students must register for HMAN 2402D.
by juxtaposing readings in literature and postcolonial theory with readings Spr COLT2822R S01 27040 Arranged ’To Be Arranged'
on mourning and melancholia, drawn from a range of disciplines.
COLT 2822T. Book-Objects (HISP 2351E).
COLT 2820S. Poetry after Kant. Interested students must register for HISP 2351E.
Begins with the intensive study of a selection of writings by Immanuel Kant Fall COLT2822T S01 18908 Arranged ’To Be Arranged'
focused especially on force and conflict in politics and aesthetics. This
study, along with relevant readings from more recent work, will provide the COLT 2830C. Literature and the Arts.
basis for an approach to this topic in nineteenth-century poetry. Readings An investigation of the discourse of the arts in the modern European
of Kant (Critique of Judgment, "Toward Eternal Peace," The Conflict of the tradition. Topics include the relation between the Ancients and the
Faculties), Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben and Moderns, evaluations of the possibilities and limitations of differing media,
will lead to several "case studies" of nineteenth-century poetry, including the role of language in discussions of the "other" arts, and conceptions
works by Friedrich Hölderlin, Charles Baudelaire, and Matthew Arnold. of synaesthesia and correspondence. Texts selected from Perrault,
Winckelmann, Lessing, Diderot, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Hoffman,
COLT 2820T. Universals. Baudelaire, and others.
Explores the status of universals in classical, Hellenistic, Scholastic, and
Renaissance metaphysics. Also explores the literary implications of this COLT 2830F. Walter Benjamin and Modern Theory.
philosophical problem. Readings include Plato, Aristotle, Chrysippus, An intensive reading of selected essays by Walter Benjamin on language,
Augustine, Cicero, Seneca, Abelard, Avicenna, Aquinas, Scotus, Ficino, literature, aesthetics, and politics will be paired up with the study of the
Cusanus, Pico, and Suárez. interpretation and impact of this work on contemporary work in literary
theory and philosophy. In addition to Benjamin, we will also read Jacques
Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Samuel Weber, Giorgio Agamben, and
Peter Fenves. German and/or French helpful but not required. Open to
graduate students only.

28 Comparative Literature
 Comparative Literature 29

COLT 2830H. Cultural Translation: Theory and Practice.

Across a range of disciplines, "cultural translation" today stands for the
dynamic interactions among cultures. Derived from cultural anthropology
and linguistic translation, the metaphor of translation (already a metaphor:
trans+latere, to bear across) is used increasingly to analyze how cultures
are transmitted through the operations of colonial expansion, diaspora
and immigration. Though cultural globalization is assumed to be a 20th
century phenomenon, the result of an expansion and acceleration in the
movement and exchange of ideas, commodities and capital, this seminar
considers a longer historical frame for understanding cultural competition.
Theoretical texts including Schleiermacher, Jakobson, Benjamin, Derrida,
Spivak, and a "case study," Shakespeare.
COLT 2830I. Histories of the Early Modern Body.
This seminar considers the production of knowledge about the body in
the early modern period. The institution of science and how the emerging
"science" of the body was visualized; discourses of the erotic, the scientific
and the religious; the body in varied cultural performances including the
blason, devotional texts, erotica, drama etc. Texts include theoretical work
on gender and sexuality. Open to graduate students only.
COLT 2830L. Economies of the Visual (The Reverse of Images).
In The Time-Image, Deleuze wrote: “Money is the reverse of all the
images that the cinema shows and edits on the obverse, so that films
about money are already, if implicitly, films within the film or about the
film.” What are the implications of this sentence for the economy of images
(what Susan Buck-Morss terms their iconomy)? From The Big Store (Marx
Brothers) to Peter Jackson’s King Kong, we will trace various mobilizations
of the gaze, leading from the proto-cinematographic elevators and
escalators to the actual developments of eye-tracking technologies,
allowing for an increasing commodification of the gaze itself.
COLT 2830P. The History of Wonder in Colonial Spanish American
Lettres (HISP 2350H).
Interested students must register for HISP 2350H.
COLT 2830Q. Augustan Literature and Egypt (LATN 2090I)..
Interested students must register for LATN 2090I.
Fall COLT2830QS01 18909 Arranged ’To Be Arranged'
COLT 2980. Reading and Research.
Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct
section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
COLT 2990. Thesis Preparation.
For graduate students who have met the residency requirement and are
continuing research on a full time basis.
Fall COLT2990 S01 16552 Arranged ’To Be Arranged'
Spr COLT2990 S01 25217 Arranged ’To Be Arranged'

Comparative Literature 29